1 Tahrcountry Musings: Hunting for ‘Conservation' comes a cropper

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Hunting for ‘Conservation' comes a cropper

Hunting for conservation has been touted as an answer to conservation problems. There are many votaries for it and lion conservation in Africa is linked to it. But a new study suggests that hunters who pay to shoot the animals are killing too many lions and pretty soon they will become endangered.
Seventy years ago Africa had an estimated 450,000 lions.  It has come down to less than a tenth of that.
The research team looked at several explanations for the decline of lions and the decreasing success rate of hunters. Expanding agriculture, disease, and retaliatory killings were taken in to reckoning. The team says hunters have been overexploiting the lions and this is the main reason for the decline of lions.
The research was led by Dr by Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota Details of the research will appear in an upcoming issue of journal Conservation Biology.

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