News

"When conflicts arise, Africans should kick out the hunters" says the Financial Times

Monday 8th July 2019

FT article

Trophy assets: lion prices, dead or alive? Article in the UK Financial Times this Saturday 6th July 2019.

Last week, we were contacted by Jonathan Guthrie, Associate Editor of the Financial Times to provide an economic value of a live lion versus a trophy hunted lion. Jonathan came to us because he wanted to ascertain the realistic economic value of a lion and pointed out at the outset that he was completely impartial.

One of the reasons for contacting us is that we put a post on the LionAid website in 2013 referencing a study by Thresher in 1981 quoting the value of an adult male lion in Amboseli, Kenya as over $500,000 to photographic tourism.

We now estimate that value (of a male lion over its pride lifetime) to be $890,000 in tourism revenues to a National Park in Tanzania - the Serengeti.

Mr Guthrie did his own calculations and came up with a value for ANY lion (not an adult male) of $179,000.

Mr Guthrie concluded that "wildlife tourism and trophy hunting are not always mutually exclusive. When conflicts arise, Africans should kick out the hunters."

Given that Jonathan made huge efforts to provide a very fair analysis and give the trophy hunting industry every opportunity to show its value, at the end of the exercise he was VERY persuaded that trophy hunting is not providing African countries with anywhere near an equivalent income for their wildlife resources that live animals can provide.