Another Tragic Victim of Trophy Hunting Greed

On Oct. 8 of this year, near Zimbabwe’s southern Gonarezhou National Park, another exceptionally majestic elephant was gunned down and killed for no reason, other than the profound self-serving greed of an unnamed German hunter who paid $61,000 to end a thriving and exceptional bull male elephant’s life. Still grieving the cruel and pointless murder of Cecil the lion, we are left feeling loss, bewilderment, and anguish–even more so because the trophy hunter was so disgustingly proud to share his arrogance in a photograph, which also shows the local hunting guide sitting on the dead elephant’s knee. Both looked insignificant compared to the size of this 40 – 60 year old elephant whose tusks weighed 120 pounds each. An elephant such as he has not been killed for at least 30 years in all of Africa. Yet, this outrageous example is frighteningly common for a wild elephant’s experience.

Poachers and trophy killers look for the “tuskers” whose tusk length, along with body size, are two powerful indications of genetic fitness. This genetic heritage goes dark within the corpse of every murdered elephant. Given that 100,000 elephants were executed by poachers over the past three years, we must remember also that poachers killed another forty elephants near the same national park where this particular elephant was shot. The poachers were indiscriminate and immensely cruel, preferring to use cyanide, a particularly torturous tool of death; killing young and old alike, including scavengers of other species who will eat the elephants’ remains and pass them into the food chain, which will then become toxic for all creatures feeding in the affected area.

Trophy Hunters and Poachers: No Difference to the Elephants

Are we to see trophy hunters and poachers as two entirely different tragedies? No. The irony is that while poachers murder elephants for the large sums of money they can make from selling ivory, hunters PAY large sums of money for the sick thrill and warped power of murdering elephants. Poachers poach for complex economical reasons, trying to survive in a decimated economy with few options for survival. While it is no justification for such horrific actions, selling ivory is a response to economic desperation and gutted resources and a market that will purchase it. With equally catastrophic impact, are the trophy hunters, with their excess resources of wealth, justifying their horrific actions, all the while asserting that their elite and exclusive hunting organizations, which collude with corrupt Environment Ministers, are actually helping to manage elephant populations and are supporting the economy of the struggling communities where the hunts are organized.

Poaching and trophy hunting are both born from the belief that elephants are commodities ONLY, and valuable more dead than alive, but murder is murder, however you try to justify it. We must not lessen our gut response to the symbolic killings of this elephant and Cecil the lion. These are unacceptable acts of violence and greed.

The size of this elephant dwarfed these men in many ways, perhaps most certainly including character and an honest relationship to their ecosystem. Undeniably, he, the elephant, came from a different culture whose values are well-known, documented in science and steeped in elephant ethics. They have a right to their lives and humans could do well to learn from, rather than murder, these incredible beings.