Thursday Thoughts: Trophy Hunting.

So this isn't a normal post, as you can tell from the title. This subject was chosen by me after me and my mother spoke about it quite a lot, more than anything this post is going to primarily be information on a topic I've thought and seen a lot of in the past week or so, and in the past week or so we have been hearing a lot about the shooting of Cecil the lion, a victim of Trophy Hunting.

The definition of Trophy Hunting is:

• Trophy hunting is the selective hunting of wild game animals. Although parts of the slain animal may be kept as a hunting trophy or memorial (usually the skin, antlers and/or head).

Cecil was a 13-year-old male Southwest African lion who lived in the Hwange National Park in Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe. He was a major attraction at the park and was being studied and tracked by the University of Oxford as part of a larger study. Cecil was shot by Walter Palmer, an American recreational big-game hunter, who had wounded him with an arrow from a crossbow. He was then tracked, and on 1 July 2015, approximately 40 hours later, he was killed with a rifle. The killing drew international media attention and sparked outrage among animal conservationists.
Walter Palmer paid an estimate of £35,000 to kill Cecil. Cecil being one of the dominant males of a group, the other 'dominant' male is now a danger to the cubs of Cecil as he now wants to declare dominance. Luckily no bad news has come and Cecil's cubs are safe for now.

Sabrina Corgatelli has also been under attack after posing with the dead animals she had killed on her recent guided hunt in south Africa, she defended the hobby stating that "everyone thinks were cold-hearted killers and its not that" and that "here is a connection to the animal and just because we hunt them doesn't mean we don't have a respect for them."

Every year, trophy hunters kill thousands of wild animals, primarily in Africa. They prefer to kill the most beautiful, the biggest and the rarest. Wealthy trophy hunters pay big money to local cash-stripped governments for permits that grant them a choice of which animal to kill. The list of “huntable” species is very long and includes more common species such as impala, black bears, common zebra, giraffes, and baboons, but also endangered species such as elephants, leopards and white rhinos (the Western African black rhino  has also been declared to be “extinct”).

There is also no regard for species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) such as the African elephant or leopards. In fact, the more rare the animal, the more thrill to kill for the “big game” hunters, and the higher the price for the permit.

Since Cecil was hunted and killed, Trophy hunting has been the topic of many discussions and on every news channel. Trophy hunting needs to be stopped, the slaughter of innocent and sometimes endangered animals needs to be brought to an end, we need to take further steps to protect the animals of the world. It's very sad that it took the murder of Cecil to bring trophy hunting to the attention of many people, trophy hunting takes place maybe everyday and we have been oblivious to it until now.


I know this was just information you may or may not already know I just wanted to share it with you after I had thought a lot about the topic this week. Feel free to talk in the comments about the topic. Thank you for visiting the blog and reading this post.