US envoy urges Govt to keep ban on hunting big cats

US Ambassador to Zambia Eric Schultz has urged Government to keep the ban on hunting big casts and elephants in place until it is established that the numbers support a resumption of hunting.

Ambassador Schultz who earlier this month visited the South Luangwa National Park notes in a statement issued to QFM News that the best way to establish how many big cats there are in Zambia is by statistical sampling and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles with heat imaging capability.

He says without such reliable estimate, it is courting disaster to reinstate the hunting of big cats as the government and the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) have proposed.

Mr Schultz notes that lions and leopards are not easy to count especially by air and that there is no agreement among stakeholders on how many big there are in Zambia

He points out that the fate of Zambia’s rhinos is a good example that there is a different story possible as well that when hunting is neither ethical nor sustainable nor given to responsible hunters it is really no different than poaching and puts at risk the survival of a species.

Mr Schultz has questioned what will happen to Zambia’s tourism industry, already the source of so many jobs and with so much potential to drive future growth, if the big cats or elephants go the way of Zambia’s rhinos.

He however, states that it was gratifying to see that State House is seized with Zambia’s poaching crisis and considering drastic action.

Mr Schultz states that while poaching must be eradicated, hunting can be a part of Zambia’s tourism industry going forward; albeit a small part.

He says Photographic safaris on the other hand are the backbone of Zambia’s tourism industry.

He adds that at hundreds of dollars a night, it doesn’t take much to figure out the economic value of Zambia’s lions, stating that over the course of their lives they are worth millions of dollars in tourism revenue.

Ambassador Schultz states that by contrast, they are worth $4,500 to the Zambian Government and ZAWA, which is the price of a license to kill a lion, which the Government means to allow once more in 2016, when two lions per concession are to be killed.