Archives for November 3, 2005

Here’s another photograph from my trip to the Northern Territory of Australia (NT), view image (90KB). This crocodile had just snatched a barramundi for afternoon tea.

There was much talk in the NT about federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell’s decision to not support safari hunting of crocodiles.

Federal government approval is needed for the export of skins and heads. Of the 600 crocodiles culled each year, the NT government wants to let 25 be shot by overseas tourists who would apparently be willing to pay $10,000 for the privilege to shoot a croc – as long as they can take the head and skins home with them.

The Minister has said “No” on the basis that such a plan would send the wrong signal to the world, like that we don’t care about our wildlife.

I have been re-reading ‘At the hand of man: Perils and hope for Africa’s wildlife’ by Raymond Bonner (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1993). Bonner writes about the early history of WWF and other conservation groups that have their origins in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. WWF was launched in Tanzania in 1961. The panda symbol was just a symbol, that animal chosen in large part because it reproduced well in black and white. The African Wildlife Leadership Foundation (now known as the African Wildlife Foundation) was also founded in 1961 and by rich Europeans and Americans who were avid big-game hunters. They loved the big animals and wanted them protected, including so they could shot them.

For example, according to Bonner, Russel E. Train was an American tax court judge and avid big-game hunter, founder of the African Wildlife Foundation, first chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, has been head of the Environmental Protection Agency and in the early 1990s was chairman of WWF in the United States.

WWF now supports a Russel E. Train Conservation Program.

I guess the point I am wanting to make, is that at least historically, safari hunting has been synonymous with conservation.