It’s my belief that allowing hunters to shoot and kill big game in Africa is a good thing.
The South Africa Rhinoceros’s population was close to complete extinction but since 2005 when the Government allowed the killing of old male Rhino that could no longer add any benefit to the survival of the species could be hunted under licence the population has increased to a very safe 11,000. The only reason for this is money from hunting. Local people are now gainfully employed to protect the Rhino from poachers earning a wage that few employers in the area can match.
To my opponent’s I say this.. Without the money from Hunting local people would not care about the Rhino and they would allow the poachers to kill them to extinction to supply medical quacks in China. The best way forward is to control conservation and keep this animal safe from poachers.
It’s also worth noting since 2004, both Namibia and South Africa have each had annual hunting quotas approved by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/21/opinions/rhino-hunt-is-conservation/http://conservationmagazine.org/2014/01/can-trophy-hunting-reconciled-conservation/
• Hunters spent eleven million US dollars in the Namibian economy
• In a 2005 paper by Nigel Leader-Williams and colleagues in the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy describes how the legalization of white rhinoceros hunting in South Africa motivated private landowners to reintroduce the species onto their lands. As a result, the country saw an increase in white rhinos from fewer than one hundred individuals to more than 11,000, even while a limited number were killed as trophies.
• In a 2011 letter to Science magazine, Leader-Williams also pointed out that the implementation of controlled, legalized hunting was also beneficial for Zimbabwe’s elephants. “Implementing trophy hunting has doubled the area of the country under wildlife management relative to the 13% in state protected areas,” thanks to the inclusion of private lands, he says. “As a result, the area of suitable land available to elephants and other wildlife has increased, reversing the problem of habitat loss and helping to maintain a sustained population increase in Zimbabwe’s already large elephant population.”