In Zimbabwe, We Don’t Cry for Lions

It is amazing how everyone can jump on this wave of political bandwagon, including the government in Zimbabwe, without really acknowledging the irony that much more terrible things have happened in Zimbabwe in the past 20 years without nearly the same outcry. Massive hyperinflation, people starving to death, and we suddenly have tears in the West over "Cecile the lion". The corrupt government of Zimbabwe is quick to wipe away our tears and assure us that this will never happen again, all the while continuing to neglect their human citizens. I can agree that big game hunting is stupid and wasteful, but killing a lion simply isn't that big of a deal, not in the grand scheme of things, and not when we rely every day on the deaths of millions of cattle to provide us food. That's just cognitive dissonance. If anything, the doctor was paying a high price for a stupid hobby, which ultimately benefits the local people of Zimbabwe. How many people in Zimbabwe can be fed for $25,000, the price of hunting a male lion?

&gt;Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.<p>So don&#x27;t learn from our mistakes, basically?<p>This is among the most ignorant things I have ever read. Terrible article from a person with a terrible mentality.

If people are hitting the paywall the gist of the article is that lions are dangerous animals. People living in rural village are terrorized by lions and it has a serious impact on their way of life. Zimbabweans have a lot of respect for wild animals but aren&#x27;t opposed to them being hunted. America once again stirred up a social media frenzy when they don&#x27;t understand the issue at all.

&quot;We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s on point.

Honestly Zimbabwe has so many problems a lion dying is not a big issue. Hell Zimbabwe children were being tied up and set on fire a few months ago in South Africa[0].<p>[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HyX4aOd_2BY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HyX4aOd_2BY</a>

&gt;Don’t tell us what to do with our animals<p>the animals aren&#x27;t yours or anybody else&#x27;s. They belong to that planet which we just happen to share. Human race, having achieved the ability to destroy the planet&#x27;s eco-sphere, thus got a duty of steward of the eco-sphere which it has been carrying poorly so far.<p>Anyway, killing big game this days is a serious mental sickness.

It&#x27;s a pity there is so much confusion between 1) how foreigners reacted to the incident, 2) the problem of endangered species and violated habitats and 3) the poor situation of the locals. It seems nearly impossible to have a rational conversation about a damn lion while these three things aren&#x27;t considered separately first. Yeah, I&#x27;ve tried to read the article&#x27;s comments, my bad...

I&#x27;ve been trying for weeks to start an honest discussion on the Internet about a hunter&#x27;s role in conservation. At almost every turn I get hit with the &quot;he&#x27;s a poacher&quot; stick!<p>Can we just forget about the dentist? He&#x27;s not a poacher! Maybe he&#x27;s just a bad person?! No one really knows. But he&#x27;s not a poacher.<p>&#x2F;* If you want to see what a poacher does and if you don&#x27;t want to sleep for a few days then just ask me for a video of a live Rhino, suffering, with half it&#x27;s face chainsawed off for his horn... (Brings me half to tears to just describe the video!) *&#x2F;<p>He&#x27;s not what&#x27;s important here. People are loving the animals that they care about to death. They&#x27;re so against someone killing them that they&#x27;re hurting the hunting, and in turn, the conservation industry.<p>One of the most beloved people on Earth, Nelson Mandela, hunted and described the benefits that hunting had on conversation: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;ZJ0QK" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;ZJ0QK</a><p>Nelson is cited for marketability, for the real numbers there are plenty of credible sources and institutions that&#x27;ll provide the same information.

... Well except that Zimbabwe is trying to extradite the dentist for poaching. The lion was in a national park that brings in significant tourism dollars for the state, they quite literally were crying for this lion.

It is way different having to kill a lion that is making life in your village miserable to having this foreigner come in and do it for &quot;fun&quot; disregarding the laws of your country. One thing doesn&#x27;t excuse the other.<p>Having said that, he is right on &quot; ... don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed ...&quot;

The best way to turn me off of a cause is to see a bunch of people soapboxing on facebook&#x2F;twitter. Regardless of whether or not I agree with Cecil the lion being hunted down, the internet mob is disgusting.

I find all these articles that try to compare and measure sympathy and emotion as pointless. People are comparing the outpouring of grief for Cecil to apathy towards human killings and inhuman treatment of animals in the meat industry. A person can be severely depressed if they lose a dog, and another can show no emotion when they lose a parent. You can&#x27;t compare human emotion because it&#x27;s not always rational.<p>In this specific case though, I would also argue given the declining numbers of lions, the anger is justified.

I grew up in small town in eastern part of India, where Tigers were rolling on the streets and wild elephants were more dangerous than any other animal. Just dont piss them off, that was told to anyone new in that area. My dad use to take me to elephant(trained off course) rides into the jungle(the real jungle) to watch tigers and all other wild animals. I started to enjoy it more and more. My uncle was a forest ranger and had a tiger cub, so I played with him every weekend or whenever I get a chance to visit him. One day I came to know a tiger was shot dead by &quot;some guy&quot; as kid I felt really bad, I was like &quot;why kill a tiger for no reason?&quot; I was more surprised when the local people were really sad about this. Like, they have develop some kind of affection to this animals, no matter how deadly they can be. An unspoken bond between the people and the wild animals. Off course the government was not going to investigate much about it, because of local corrupt officials. Officials were more concerned about food, jobs, education and medical facilities. Which took more highlight than the killing a tiger, which for majority of people in that locality was a big deal.

I live near Vancouver in BC. We still have large mammal wildlife, grizzly bears, black bears, Cougars. They are killed by park rangers or police if they become comfortable in the human world. You can also pay to go on grizzly hunting trips further north in the province. We have just as far to go as we want Zimbabwe too.<p>But just because it&#x27;s the same here, and because there are worse things there, can&#x27;t we just agree that culling these magnificent animals should be done by officials as the grim task it is, and not by rich for recreation?<p>Lions that attack villagers do have to be killed sadly, but why not embrace Eco tourism instead of trophy hunting for the ones that are not a threat?

Sport hunting changes lion social behavior, as per: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0006320710003459" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0006320710...</a> I don&#x27;t have an Elsevier account, so only read the abstract, which states that lions are seeking denser cover.<p>Some conjecture:<p>Do Zimbabwe villagers live in denser cover? If so, maybe sport hunting increase the threat by forcing lions closer to villagers? That would add a bit of irony to the situation.

The frankly appalling discussion going on over at the nyt&#x27;s comments section with first world environmentalists saying the author and the rest of that third world people should just &quot;move to the city&quot; without even the slightness sign of empathy towards people who make less in a year than what many nyt readers make in a day ironically reminds me of the attitude many far-right US nationals have regarding immigration. Basically most of them simply ignore the realities of the immigration process and honestly believe that people can just walk to the nearest US embassy and request a greencard and that the reason there are so many illegals its simply because they wont do that.<p>Of course even a glimpse at the US visa system shows that there is no such option, that many visas are just temporary and tied to employment or studies that will eventually end, and honestly the only real option left is to just marry a US citizen, an option which is already becoming more and more difficult. The far-right is unwilling to understand this and how if their grandfathers in the 20th century had been faced with these strict immigration rules they would been forced to return home and stay there when in reality many came here unannounced and uninvited, just as illegals do today.<p>Back to the lion issue, the problem with this line of thinking that rejects the idea that opinions from outside the US hold any value nor should be considered at all is that it doesn&#x27;t solves the problem. Hunting in Zimbabwe, a dirt-poor country with a collapsed economy, its actually the only way some people have to make a living. US environmentalists much like the far-right don&#x27;t share that problem with the other side and thus can afford the luxury of disregarding their suffering and even ask the foreigners for further sacrifices so they don&#x27;t have to admit they were dead wrong.

No problem, you will cry for lions in the future, probably.<p><i>&quot;Using the calculations of Hayward et al. (2007), biomass density of preferred lion prey in Gonarezhou national park was calculated... the protected area could support enough preys for between 115 and 357 lions.</i><p><i>... the 2014 census found 33 lions in the protected area.</i><p>Lions where positive only in the 5% of the points analyzed in the census.<p><i>For the Tuli Safari Area the scientific model predict a population of about 40 lions and the 2014 census found...</i><p><i>zero lions</i><p>Source: &quot;<i>Surveys of lions Panthera leo in protected areas in Zimbabwe yield disturbing results: what is driving the population collapse?&quot;</i> Groom et al. 2014.<p>Models also predict that the park could support a population of Hyaena of 354 animals... 2014 census found between 400-490 hyaena in the national park instead.<p>This is hardly a surprise because is the same ecological rule for the whole freaking planet earth: Mesocarnivore liberation. Same that leads to the american coyote, and the english fox and the jackals now expanding to the west and reconquering Europe. You are bassically destroying the big fauna in cascade. A really expensive mistake.<p>&gt; <i>How many people in Zimbabwe can be fed for $25,000, the price of hunting a male lion?</i><p>This will depend on how many money and goats they have still after figthing the strange new hyaenas plague. And don&#x27;t forget the bovine tuberculosis also.<p>Ok I have one idea, If we wipped the local lion pride we could kill also those 50 new hyaenas!.<p>(some months later) end of the hyaena problem, hum, how this new 500 jackals appeared?

People are coming to the defence of man-eating lions in a place where lions eat people.<p>How are there 7 billion of us when we hate ourselves and each other so much?

Though I don&#x27;t care much about the subject in general, I&#x27;m already tired of this backlash against the backlash. :&#x2F;<p>However yes, we can be angry about the Cecil incident. It went viral for whatever reason, other incidents didn&#x27;t. That&#x27;s the nature of social media, you&#x27;ll have to get used to it. No, we don&#x27;t have to &quot;fix&quot; Zimbabwe or the world before being angry at one needless death, thanks.<p>The author&#x27;s point about lions scaring villagers when he was young is interesting yet not a justification, these lions are now in a reserve and the species is now vulnerable, if not soon to be endangered. Of course behind the words there is always the lingering self-serving idea that people are so much more important than our cousins in the animal kingdom. Well, guess what at 7 billion vs. 25k lions, which population could use a little thinning?

I&#x27;ll never forget our tour guide in Zimbabwe saying his last paycheck before dollarization was 4 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars. For a tour guide. So yeah, they might have bigger problems than Cecil the Lion.

Sure, there may have been much worse things happened in Zimbabwe than a beloved wildlife Cecil, but the fact that this event raises awareness about wildlife conservation is a BIG DEAL! [1]<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;international&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;cecil-supporters-donations&#x2F;400436&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;international&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;cec...</a><p>PS: I was wondering if Palmer&#x27;s PR team paied for this NYT article.

Translation: &quot;you imperialist westerners are out of touch, soft, and basically, anti-Africa (a stop short of &#x27;racist&#x27;). How can you love a dangerous creature more than all us poor Africans&quot;?<p>Because there are 7 billion of us on the planet and only 30k lions left. We have had it really good (including Zimbabwe in terms of population growth) for 150 years, yet we have decimated our kindred animals using excuses like &quot;conservation&quot; or &quot;danger&quot;. This article takes an instinct that was relevant 300 years ago and shamelessly punts it into our modern age, circumstances having changed enormously, in order ultimately to push another agenda.

So all people in Zimbabwe do not think exactly the same? And might even have differences of opinion? Mind blown...<p>Not really sure how Cecil the Lion fits into HN, oh well.

Finally some sanity.

That is some very basic trolling. Not sure why HN crowd is biting, or why this article is on HN at all.

Anthropocentrism at its purest. Reminds me of someone on BBC talking about &quot;shark infested waters of South Africa&quot;.

&gt; We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usaid.gov&#x2F;zimbabwe" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usaid.gov&#x2F;zimbabwe</a>

What&#x27;s the author&#x27;s point? That we should wantonly kill lions? Let&#x27;s just eradicate &#x27;em all?<p>He should sound much happier, then. Because we&#x27;re on our way:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;extinction-countdown&#x2F;african-lions-face-extinction-by-2050-could-gain-endangered-species-act-protection&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;extinction-countdown&#x2F;afr...</a>

Most of Zimbabwe&#x27;s problems are not America&#x27;s fault, and quite frankly, there&#x27;s not much we can do about them. But Cecil&#x27;s corpse is our fault, because he was shot by an American dentist. People tend to care more when they feel implicated, and it&#x27;s logical to care more when you can actually do something about it. It&#x27;s easier to boycott the dentist than to hope for a coup that ousts Mugabe.

Humans are intelligent creatures and villagers killed are a result of encroaching the animals rightful land. There are no condolescence for those deaths caused by one&#x27;s own mistake. Get out of the animals territory and fight for your survival with those other humans not with poor animals. There are only 3000 tigers left in the wild if a Bengal tiger kills a villager going inside their territory of sundar ban it&#x27;s the fault of that human not tiger. Here at least American&#x27;s are being right to care about 3000 tigers or lions instead of over 7 billion humans. This article shows the sick mentality of the people who thinks it&#x27;s alright to encroach on other animals turf since it&#x27;s easier. They are cowards not able to fight for survival with their own fellow human. There are no surrounding context in it. It&#x27;s just talking about villagers encroaching lions rightful forest and pushing them to extinction.