Regulated hunting saves wildlife

And I thought $14,000 for a Buffalo River elk hunt permit was expensive.

After weathering a month long barrage from animal welfare and anti-hunting groups, the Dallas Safari Club auctioned a permit Saturday to kill a black rhinoceros in Namibia. The permit sold for $350,000.

That’s far from the $1 million that some in the hunting world projected it would bring, but well above the record of $223,000. In addition to the privilege of killing a critically endangered species, the permit also brought a lot of headaches for the winner.

The Dallas Safari Club did not disclose the name of the winning bidder, but Teresa Gubbins reported in Culture Map Houston that Corey Knowlton of Royse City, Texas, was most likely the winning bidder. Gubbins also reported that Knowlton, according to unnamed sources, was likely a front for another person who will actually use the permit.

If that is the case, it is understandable why the actual buyer desires anonymity. Gubbins reported that Knowlton’s Facebook page is being deluged with “angry comments from around the world, calling him an assortment of names and petitioning him to stay out of Africa entirely.”

The threats and name-calling actually started when the Dallas Safari Club announced it would auction the permit. The club issued a news release Dec. 4 that contained some of the threats, including death threats against the children of Dallas Safari Club members.

Experience has taught me to be reasonably skeptical about the authenticity of anonymous threats and criticism. It’s possible that sympathetic provocateurs might lodge anonymous threats and rants to generate publicity and sympathy for what the Dallas Safari Club promotes as a righteous cause. The DSC says the Namibian government will use the money for rhino conservation and to help fund counter-poaching efforts.

Likewise, one also can assume that some of the threats are authentic and probably even sincere.

This episode underscores a hard-learned lesson that has been proven most conspicuously in the United States. Unregulated market killing leads to endangerment and even extinction of wildlife species. Regulated hunting is vital to conserving wildlife, especially so-called “charismatic megafauna” like rhinos and elephants.

In this country, regulated sport hunting saved white tailed deer, elk, bighorn sheep, wild turkey and migratory waterfowl. Equally important but overlooked is the fact that sport hunters have been the catalyst and the driving force to conserve the habitat on which our wildlife depends.

It’s also prudent to be reasonably suspicious that the $350,000 from the rhino permit generated will simply line Namibian bureaucrats’ pockets, and that it won’t be used for conservation or anti-poaching efforts at all.

The money’s actual destination is the prerogative of the Namibian government.

I only know that the U.S. system works. If emulated, it’s a model that would work anywhere.