When Cecil the lion was killed the majority of the world showed support by donating nearly R20 million to the Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU).

Source from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel to a Texas artist who printed a sketch of Cecil on tote bags, the expectation was that the donations would be used to protect the lions in the Zimbabwean Hwange National Park and prevent any future killings.

WildCRU was, after all, the one monitoring Cecil with a satellite collar, reports The Daily Maverick.

But in July this year, Cecil’s son, Xanda, a pride leader with a WildCRU collar, was shot by a professional hunter named Richard Cooke. Cooke also killed Xanda’s four-year-old brother in 2015, the same year Cecil was killed.

Prepare yourself for a longer read than normal, because what Don Pinnock has to say is quite interesting:

Xanda was six years old and a father with several young cubs, most of whom would probably have been killed without him to defend them. There was understandable media outrage following the hunt. An international lobby coalition, Tourists Against Trophy Hunting, called for an immediate end to trophy killing in Zimbabwe.

WildCRU’s response was puzzling and, for the thousands of people who donated to the Cecil fund, disappointing. The unit’s research fellow, Dr Andrew Loveridge, said Xanda was “a very, very lovely animal” and it was “sad that anyone wanted to shoot a lion”, but offered no condemnation of the killing.

But as time went on, it got worse:

Richard Cooke, Loveridge said, was one of the “good” guys.

“He is very ethical, he doesn’t cut corners. He has always communicated with us when he has hunted an animal and given us the collar back. He’s not one of the fly-by-night guys. His hunt was legal and Xanda was over six years old so it is all within the stipulated regulations.”

Loveridge added that Cooke “has killed several collared lions in the past,” is a responsible operator and had a legal quota for the hunt.

In response to a question about the hunt, Loveridge SMSed:

“I believe Richard Cooke was aware of this lion being collared. He is always good about liaising with us. We don’t have any special protection in place for collared animals. So no issue on this from our side. We just need the collar back undamaged as has happened in this case.”

Cooke reportedly said he had checked with WildCRU before pulling the trigger, which, if true, kind of means that they sanctioned the hunt, right?

Although there are only 20 000 wild lions left in Africa, it appears that WildCRU’s role is not just to protect the lions. Rather, the likes of the WildCRU is important to Oxford, “not for the protection of lions so much as the attraction of postgraduate students and funding”.

Indeed:

University research units are, among other things, degree factories cautious about research permits.

In that sense, WildCRU’s survival is more important than the life of a trophy lion. Its job is to understand lions, not protect them. You definitely don’t want to fall foul of a foreign government and lose your licence to be there. And when hunters are a powerful lobby, you need their support.

The truth hurts, doesn’t it?

You see, for the past 20 years, while WildCRU has been studying lions in the park, it has also released various studies which suggest opposing ideas. One study stated that “if wide ranging wildlife species cannot be protected even by large national parks, then the long-term future of these charismatic species may be bleak”:

“The rule of thumb that a six-year-old male lion is post-reproductive and can therefore be hunted,” he told me. “This is in my experience incorrect and I believe this should be acknowledged in hunting policy and recommendations. We’re also recommending that a no-hunting buffer should be implemented around national parks to prevent hunters baiting and shooting park lions that are regularly viewed by tourists.”

But another study, released 12 months after Cecil’s death, suggested that trophy hunting was actually “good for conservation”:

Hunting, it said, “can contribute to lion conservation … which constitutes a good reason to tolerate it at least on land that might otherwise be lost to the lion estate”.

Accepting donations from both sides of the fence, it’s clear that WildCRU, as it has argued itself, merely provides “evidence based on research to policy makers and conservationists”:

For that reason, WildCRU itself does not take a position, but simply continues to gather data, analyse it and disseminate the information.

Gross.

So where did that $1,3 million raised for protecting the likes of Cecil actually go? Well, no one actually knows, but it’s obvious that Oxford likes the money coming in, no matter the source, while WildCRU doesn’t really care about the lions.

[source:dailybeast]