Although I see the appeal in America of being outraged over a far away poor nation's exploitation of animal wildlife - it deflects the reality of the massive exploitation of wildlife by in your own backyard.

And guess who is supporting the wildlife hunter...it begins with N and ends in Evil?

America could and should lead the way for the world by cleaning up it's own backyard full of 320 million guns and countless hunting ranges and kills for pleasure.

The NRA does not want you to take the next logical step and have the justifiable outrage turn to them.

Tanzania is some of the most mineral and precious stone rich real estate on the planet.

Invest in industry and growth, not in death and exploitation. There is no justification.

Industry and growth means death and exploitation. They are inseparable.

but they're not as lucrative.

And, the wildlife population still needs to be managed, to prevent death by starvation etc. So if expensive hunts were eliminated, the game managers would still have to reduce the population to a size that can survive on the available resources.

A hunter still needs to be responsible for selecting the target. A lion with a collar, radio, and antenna should probably not be considered an acceptable target.

Populations only need to be managed if:

-Humans have already fucked up the ecosystem (for example, by removing natural predators, vegetation, re-routing water flows, cutting down trees, etc)
-Management is very often nothing more than a euphemism for "hunting opportunities"

A viable ecosystem NEEDS NO management at all. Especially by humans. There is ample evidence both from pre-human times and from current times that an ecosystem left untouched will go along just fine. There will be fluctuations of prey/predator relation in addition to bottom up trophic factors (such as nutrients, etc) but the ecosystem will stabilize at various equilibrium depending on the carrying capacity of said ecosystem.

The "we must manage" predators because they will eat up all the prey is hilarious claptrap peddled by Japanese whalers, fisheries, safari operations, etc. From a scientific perspective it's pure bullshit.

The only time at all ecosystems need to be "managed" is when they've been altered to begin with, but a healthy ecosystem requires nothing from humans other than our absence.

but we know that rhinos and elephants are being hunted and killed for the ivory and for their genitalia that are supposed to be provide sexual vigor.

There have been talk that if such poaching would continue, the only large animals would be seen in a zoo.

Thus, we do need protected land for lions, and for apes and, in this country, pretty soon for bears.

Why, do you think, coyotes and bears invade neighborhoods in California and across the country? Because we have interfered with the natural habitats.

The "tragedy of the commons" is such that there is no benefit to a single individual acting unilaterally to control their own harvest. This is why management is vital, to keep people from doing what they are so prone to do, act in their own best interests at the cost of everyone else. That paper by Garrett Hardin is required reading and should be by everyone who even comments on this issue.

No such ecosystems exist in the world that have not been at least touched by human activities.

The sale of hunting and fishing licenses and taxes on their equipment pay for the enforcement of wildlife laws, among other things. There are excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment in the US that also pays for conservation activities. Hikers and campers and people who simply like to view wildlife pay no such extra taxes. In fact these groups have fought them for years. The last effort to put excise taxes on camping and hiking equipment, to fund parks, among other things, failed in a much friendlier Congress years ago and no way would it pass now.

In the US, we have fairly strict regulations, good enforcement, and these regulations are generally (though not universally) accepted as part of the deal.

In Africa, it may be a different story, depending on the country. Poaching is often rampant, enforcement costs a lot of money that governments may not have and there are a host of other issues besides. Mainly that when people do not have enough food, the welfare of animals is a secondary consideration at best. The trade-off may be to sell a few licenses to hunt lions or whatever in order to protect and manage the rest. I'm not saying that is the right thing to do, but it might be the only thing possible under the circumstances and it is the height of arrogance for us to tell them what they can and cannot do for themselves.

...they should do so at 400mm and f/5.6.

For a license to snap a photo.

Just saying.

In my mind, the magic is in being able to see the animals, no execution required. But I'm a photographer and not large animal killer. So I'd expect a different, less sociopathic clientele that could still pump money into local economies.

Most tourism in African lion range countries is non-consumptive nature tourism. Among holiday and leisure visitors, nature-based attractions are the dominant motivations for travelling to Africa. Tourism industries in lion range countries is almost entirely based on nature tourism.

Saving the lions are more important. Find another way to make money or cut back. Save the lions!

The fees from the safaris provide money for the preserves that save the lions.

Even then, many of the preserves don't do what they want and a lot of wildlife each year is killed or dies.

The reason for this isn't just or even "so much" poaching, as the need of the locals to have more land for housing, grazing, and agriculture. *That* is more responsible for killing off lions than big game hunters. We get upset over those animals we see, know about, find cute, and consider symbols. The rest--meh.

But it's really just the trolleybush problem: We feel responsible for the death of a single lion, but not the 10 lions that would die by saving that one lion. (The trolleybus problem goes like this: You can see that if a trolleybus continues on its path it will kill 10 people. You can push somebody in such a way that the trolley will be rerouted and save those 10, but that one person will die as a result. Do you push or not? People thinking quickly will tend to say, "Let the other 10, I'm not going to murder anybody." Those who think slowly will tend to say, "Yes, I will kill one to save 10." A variant on the problem gives you control over the lever, but if you pull it to save the 10 the trolley gets rerouted to kill the 1.)

"The fees from the safaris provide money for the preserves that save the lions. ..."

Trophy hunting advocates present the industry as large, citing figures such as $200m in annual revenue. But in the context of national economies, the industry is tiny, contributing at best a fraction of a percent of GDP. Nature based tourism does play a significant role in national development, but trophy hunting is insignificant. Across the investigated countries, trophy hunting revenue was only 1.8% of tourism revenues. Most tourism in African lion range countries is non-consumptive nature tourism. Among holiday and leisure visitors, nature-based attractions are the dominant motivations for travelling to Africa. Tourism industries in lion range countries is almost entirely based on nature tourism (Scholes and Biggs 2004).

IFAW Report, 2013

More exciting and a picture lasts longer.

http://www.treehugger.com/endangered-species/killing-lions-protect-them-does-it-make-sense.html

"We had to destroy that village to save it"

What should we think about that line of reasoning? On one hand, sometimes you have to break some eggs to make an omelette, and maybe this is the price to pay to finance conservation efforts... But on the other, we have to be careful about false dichotomies. There are other choices. We don't necessarily need wealthy people to fly around the world just so they can shoot top predators from afar and then feel manly when they off show the carcass to their friends (I mean, there's not much merit in killing a lion with what is basically a sniper rifle -- try knife fighting one and then you can brag).
I wish conservation efforts could be funded by regular tourism, photographic safaris, maybe some environmental/wildlife NGOs or a small royalty on natural resources, something like that. But I also won't kid myself that the situation is simple and that the Tanzanian government has lots of resources available (though that has been getting better lately). Maybe these types of safaris can be progressively phased out as other sources of revenue are found? Note that in my opinion there's a difference between a local hunter who then eats what he or she killed and a trophy hunter who flies to the other side of the planet to kill just for fun.

You get to shoot them with a gun or whatever, pose with them, stick your head in their mouths, but you don't get to behead and skin them.

They'd have every lion in Africa radio collared in 10 years and herdsmen would be able to track every pride to preserve their livestock.

Also: $25 million a year is good I guess, but extinction is permanent. What will you sell then, Mr. Songorwa?

Is that really so unthinkable?

Stick to shooting with cameras. Period.