On the trail with the hunters who believe shooting big game can save Africa’s wildlife
Cal Flynn's article explores the paradox of trophy hunting in Africa's Nyassa Special Reserve, where killing wild animals generates revenue that funds conservation efforts. Through firsthand observation of a buffalo hunt and interviews with conservancy director Derek Littleton, Flynn examines how hunting income sustains anti-poaching operations and local communities. The piece questions whether this morally uncomfortable system can or should be replaced, given its apparent effectiveness.
Summary
The article follows journalist Cal Flynn on a ten-day hunting expedition in Mozambique's Nyassa Special Reserve, one of the world's largest protected areas at 4.2 million hectares. She accompanies professional hunter Paul Stones and his American client, a neurosurgeon she calls 'Elmer,' along with two Mozambican trackers, as they pursue Cape buffalo. The expedition illustrates the elaborate rituals and significant costs of trophy hunting — a ten-day buffalo hunt runs upward of $30,000 before game fees, while a lion hunt can exceed $100,000.
Flynn traces the history of trophy hunting's entanglement with African conservation back to a 1900 London conference — the first international environmental conference — at which European colonial powers, having devastated African wildlife through mass hunting, sought to impose preservation measures. These measures criminalized traditional African subsistence hunting while preserving the privilege of trophy hunting for elites. Many of Africa's most celebrated wildlife areas, including South Africa's Kruger National Park, originated as hunting preserves.
The Lewiri Conservancy, which manages Hunting Block L7 in Nyassa, is presented as a case study in conservation funded by trophy hunting. Director Derek Littleton explains that lion hunt revenues are among the most important income sources for the conservancy, which employs 60 anti-poaching scouts and provides boreholes, medical care, and bushmeat quotas to local communities. Without hunting income, he argues, the operation would be financially unworkable. The conservancy fought a decade-long crisis in which an estimated 10,000 elephants were killed by poachers linked to criminal gangs.
Flynn highlights the deep colonial legacy embedded in this system — from the racial makeup of professional hunters (predominantly white African men) to the paternalistic dynamic between the conservancy and local Mozambican communities. She notes that local residents, some of the world's poorest people, are prohibited from hunting in a reserve where outside hunters pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege. The community's annual cash share of trophy hunting revenues amounts to roughly $35 per person.
The article concludes with ambivalence. Despite its moral contradictions, the system appears to be producing results: lion populations in Nyassa are believed to be growing, South Africa's game populations have surged from 500,000 in 1964 to over 20 million, while Kenya, which banned hunting in 1977, has seen some of Africa's steepest wildlife declines. Flynn raises the question of whether rejecting an apparently effective conservation strategy on moral grounds is justifiable, while also acknowledging that critics argue the system perpetuates racial inequality and colonial attitudes.
Key Insights
- Flynn argues that the ban on subsistence hunting under colonial rule effectively criminalized black African hunting overnight while preserving trophy hunting as an elite privilege, a racial double standard that echoes through modern conservation policy.
- Littleton claims that without trophy hunting income, conservation operations in Block L7 would be financially unworkable, with the conservancy accounting for two-thirds of the local economy through jobs, development funding, and services.
- The article demonstrates that the effectiveness argument cuts both ways: South Africa, which most embraced trophy hunting, saw game populations rise from 500,000 to 20 million, while Kenya, which banned hunting in 1977, experienced some of Africa's steepest wildlife declines.
- Flynn observes that many celebrated founders of African conservation — including George Adamson of 'Born Free' fame — were themselves hunters, a fact largely obscured by their later conservationist reputations and popular romanticization.
- The article argues that the trophy hunting system carries an inherent colonial contradiction: local Mozambican residents living on less than $2 a day are prohibited from hunting in a reserve where foreign hunters pay six-figure sums for the same privilege, while receiving only $35 per person annually from hunting revenues.
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