Hunting the hunters: inside the brutal world of trophy hunting

The eyes of a lion tell a story of survival and loss. Thousands of lions are bred and killed each year for trophies. True conservation means protecting life — not commodifying it.

The price of being born

Imagine that you are born, but that at the same time your lifetime and your destiny depend upon a select group of people. That your life is subject to the pleasure, the practice or the enjoyment of others.
Imagine being raised in captivity for years, only for your life to culminate in the act of being hunted and celebrated as someone else’s victory.
Who protects you? Who guards your life cycle, your species, your habitat?
You have no power of choice.

Everybody should know that the life of a wild animal is worth far more than a trophy.

As ethologist Marc Bekoff (2015) reminds us, trophy hunting is not conservation — it is violence disguised as virtue.

Your existence is economized into a number that will one day decide whether you are admired or discarded. This is not metaphor. It is a condition experienced by thousands of animals every year whose lives become trophies — objects to be owned, displayed, and shipped across borders. No measurable commitments have been made to end the global wildlife trade — including trophy hunting and captive-lion breeding.

In the year 2021, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) of South Africa announced new measures to halt the domestication of captive lions, and to phase out the commercial captive-lion industry. Yet the process has stalled: the measures have not been fully implemented. Meanwhile, the charity World Animal Protection documented through sources and evidence that in South Africa there are lion farms which are unregulated and subject animals to suffering that is almost indescribable. These farms exploit animals for the export of lion bones for Asian traditional medicine. They keep lions in cages with no hygienic conditions, alongside the corpses of other lions and accumulated faeces; tigers and lions are slaughtered daily, sometimes without food to save cost, through inhuman, unhygienic processes with their body parts scattered on the ground. Workers operate in unsafe conditions, lacking sanitary equipment, at risk of zoonotic disease. They are silenced or threatened. It is estimated that between 8,000 and 12,000 lions and other big cats (including tigers) are bred and held in captivity in more than 350 facilities across South Africa.

Born to die — many lions in South Africa never see the wild. Raised in captivity and later sold to canned hunts, they pay the ultimate price simply for being born.

The IUCN Red List classifies the lion as 'Vulnerable,' meaning the species faces a high risk of extinction in the wild over the medium term. It is estimated that there has been a population decline of approximately 30% over the past two decades—about three generations of lions.

The Conservation Action Trust (2021) presents the critical opinion of the EMS Foundation. In this case, it refers to the leopards also being killed, part of the Big Five most sought after and desired. Their current conservation status reflects a population in constant decline, and they are extinct in 67% of the country. Trophy hunters have been shown to be particularly poor at determining the age and sex of leopards and are unreliable in reporting if females were killed, even admitting that shooting females—even when illegal—is acceptable. Even moderate levels of hunting have been shown to be harmful to leopards. Nevertheless, in CITES, South Africa defended the annual trophy hunting quota for leopards set at 150 leopards per year, a shocking number.

The universe of trophy hunting spans many more species, with the same cruelties, the same economic benefits, and the same deceptive excuses from governments. But trophy hunting is not conservation: it is the slaughter of wild animals for profit and the commodification of the natural world at any cost. As Mark Jones, head of policy at Born Free, says, trophy hunting has no place in the modern world, in an era where wildlife needs all the help it can get to survive. This practice should be a thing of the past. As can be inferred, trophy hunting spans many countries worldwide, and strikingly, more than 1.2 million bears have been killed as trophies in the United States over the past 25 years (World Animal News, n.d.).

In a survey of international tourists, World Animal Protection reported that 84% believe the South African government should prioritise wildlife-friendly tourism over trophy hunting; 74% think making trophy hunting a key policy pillar would damage South Africa’s reputation; 72% said they would be discouraged from visiting the country altogether. At the same time, about 7 in 10 South Africans agree their country would be a more attractive tourist destination if trophy hunting were banned, and they say wildlife-friendly tourism alternatives have not been fully used.

This is the start of a story about value — who assigns it, who receives it, who pays the cost.

The names that matter: studies, scientists, and witnesses

It is often assumed that trophy hunting is a matter of numbers — take a few animals here or there, make the math work. But what is being lost is not simply one count, but the under-told value of age, of knowledge, of social life. Animal behaviour scientist Marc Bekoff reminds us that the targeting of large, old, wise animals ignores that these individuals carry behaviours that form part of animal cultures. At its heart, conservation depends on preserving animal cultures, and understanding their social life‐cycles helps their protection. Bekoff has argued that trophy hunting is not conservation — it is the commodification of life, the removal of those who hold cultural memory.

Complementing this, ecologist Dr Keller Kopf and his colleagues at the Faculty of Science & Technology, Charles Darwin University, published (2024) a review explaining how changes to population structure — namely, the loss of older individuals — cause profound ecological, social and economic consequences: reproduction suffers, recruitment fails, trophic dynamics shift, and population resilience declines. They emphasise the necessity of “longevity conservation” — a programme to protect and restore the ecological roles distinct to older, larger, experienced animals, across species including turtles, whales, fish, elephants and more.

In other words: when the trophy hunter takes the old male lion with a broad mane, or an elephant aged and matriarchal, they are not just taking a single life; they are erasing a node of knowledge, a bridge of generations, a stabiliser of ecosystem functioning.

Jane Goodall — whose field work and moral voice have shaped how many of us think about animal lives — also criticised trophy hunting as accelerating declines in species and eroding animal cultures; her statements are often cited by conservationists arguing that the days of the “great hunter” should be over. Bekoff, Kopf et al., and Goodall’s names here are not mere prestige; they represent two registers of the case against trophy killing: rigorous observation and ethical clarity.

Trade, numbers, and the global market

Let us consider the scale. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in its 2016 report Killing for Trophies: An Analysis of Global Trophy Hunting Trade estimated that up to 1.7 million hunting trophies were traded internationally between 2004 and 2014, including at least 200,000 from species considered threatened. The United States accounted for approximately 71% of the import demand — about fifteen times the next highest nations. Three of Africa’s “Big Five” threatened taxa (African lion, African leopard, African elephant) appear among the six most traded imperilled taxa.

So we see an industry of extraction at border-scale: over 100 countries (107 participating nations) engaged in trophy trade; economies, licences, export permits, body-parts traversing continents. It is not a quaint vestige of old-world hunting; it is a modern globalised trade with species at risk.

Yet the professed conservation rationale remains weak. The claim that trophy hunting funds conservation or local development is often contradicted by studies revealing that benefits to local communities are negligible, that corruption distorts quotas and licensing, and that regulation is weak. OceanCare and other watchdogs document how trophy hunting can enable illegal trade and corruption rather than consistent, community-led conservation outcomes. In Africa, some reports estimate that big-game trophy hunting contributes just 0.006% of national budgets — a fragment of revenue — while high-end photographic tourism produces millions. The economic logic of trophy hunting begins to unravel under scrutiny.

Canned hunting: manufacture of the kill

Downstream of the trade are practices that shock the conscience. “Canned hunting,” “put-and-take,” “shopping-and-shooting”. The IFAW report defines canned hunting as hunting animals in enclosures too small to allow an animal any chance of escape, or animals that were drugged or human-habituated. Investigative reporting and NGO investigations (Born Free, The Guardian, Discover Wildlife) document hundreds of farms and facilities in South Africa and beyond where thousands of lions and other predators are bred and shot, where cubs are used as tourist props, and where animals are later sold into bone and body-part trades.

Behind the wire fence, lion cubs lose their innocence to profit. Bred in captivity, they are later sold for canned trophy hunting. The cruelty of canned hunting begins long before the gun is fired — it starts here, in the breeding farms of wildlife exploitation.

In South Africa and elsewhere, some reserves breed large carnivores (even rare mutations, such as white lions) for luxury kills. Hunters may pay tens of thousands of dollars (reports range up to US $50,000) to slay a male lion or a “golden wildebeest.” Some 200 farms reportedly house 6,000-8,000 lions with fees up to US $20,000 to kill a large male. The industry promises guaranteed opportunity, photo-op, taxidermy, export of parts.

But the cruelty is visceral: animals kept in tiny, reinforced-fenced compounds, sedated or bated, sometimes starved to improve kill-rates; vultures of death circle the logistics of guaranteed success. The reserves maintain feeding/baiting stations, guides coordinate hunts by aligning client schedules, the animal becomes prey of convenience. Beneath their rifles and trophies lies the quiet machinery of extinction.

Law-and-policy lag far behind. In some jurisdictions, minimal or non-existent federal law prohibits canned hunting; only around 20 U.S. states ban or restrict it partially. In South Africa, proposed 2006 regulations requiring release of animals for at least 24 months before hunt were annulled in 2010 by the Supreme Court of Appeal — leaving the country with no effective legal curbs.

The end of canned hunting is not in sight. There has been an increase in the import of trophies to Europe and Russia. Canned hunting, the trade of bones, and various tourist groups offer experiences like 'walking with lions,' 'petting lion cubs,' all closely related. Lions continue to be sold until their bones are traded in the Far East.

The stories that shook the world: Cecil, Blondie, and Xanda

A powerful portrait of a lion lying still in the dust, illustrating the cruelty of trophy hunting and the loss of Africa’s most iconic species. This image reflects the urgent fight for ethical conservation and the end of canned hunting.

Certain incidents cross the boundary between ethics and policy. The death of Cecil the lion (2015) — a research-tagged lion in Zimbabwe — became emblematic: lured outside park boundaries, shot, beheaded, stuffed, exported. It drew global outrage and triggered import bans, airline bans, public-pressure campaigns.

More recently, the case of “Blondie,” a collared lion in Zimbabwe, also shot while under academic study — demonstrates that even the “monitored” and “protected” can become trophies. The names matter: they humanise the loss. They remind us that these are not generic “game” but individuals, social beings.

Trophy hunters tend to prefer male lions with large manes, who are usually the leaders of their prides. When these males are killed, younger males take over and kill the cubs sired by their predecessor, leading to the loss of unique and valuable genetic traits. The same often occurs with brown bears. Furthermore, elephant hunting in the tri-border area of Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe is eliminating males in their prime reproductive age. Polar and brown bear hunting also contributes to the decline of their populations.

The killing of these lions is enabled by a complicit system: governments that issue permits, tourism operators that market the “experience,” hunters who pay large sums and then export parts, weak oversight, and silent value systems. In Tanzania, the death of six-year-old lion “Xanda” at the hands of an American hunter prompted the African Wildlife Foundation to call for a reevaluation of conservation models. Reporting by National Geographic, AP, and Africa Geographic revealed that research collars or public affection offer no real protection when economic incentives persist.

The hunt always wins

A dark silhouette of a hunter with a rifle on the horizon, embodying the global controversy around trophy hunting and the fight for ethical wildlife conservation.

The ostensible beneficiaries of trophy hunting are often distant: wealthy foreign hunters, export companies, luxury tourism operators, elite clubs (such as the Dallas Safari Club, Safari Club International, Professional Hunters Association of South Africa). The losers are many: the animal populations, the ecosystems, local communities, and the culture of wildness itself.

Meanwhile, pastoralists and smallholders who live with wildlife frequently bear costs: displacement from ancestral lands, loss of grazing, and diminished agency over landscapes that supported their livelihoods. The African Wildlife Foundation, Born Free and other groups have documented cases where hunting concessions and the expansion of game farms have dispossessed local communities.

Consider land rights: in Tanzania, Maasai communities have been expelled from ancestral lands to make way for trophy-hunting zones. The product of hunting goes to the hunter’s home country; the local people often get little. The justification of socio-economic benefit fails when only a tiny fraction of the revenue reaches those living alongside wildlife. The argument that trophy hunting substantially reduces poverty becomes questionable when earnings are minimal (0.006% of national budgets) and appear mostly to benefit non-locals.

Furthermore, the extraction of the old and wise animals reduces resilient populations; the removal of predators or keystone individuals can ripple through prey populations, vegetation dynamics, nutrient flows and landscape health.

Kopf and his co-authors make the ecological argument crystalline: older, larger, experienced individuals are not merely units of reproduction; they are repositories of information and function. The removal of elders can increase infanticide in species with male takeover dynamics (notably lions), disrupt cultural transmission in social species, and erode resilience to disturbance. The study of ageing in the animal kingdom shows why longevity matters across taxa — from elephants and whales to tortoises and long-lived fishes — and why targeted removal of the largest specimens produces cascading ecosystem effects. This is the scientific core of what some commentators call “conservation of longevity.”

The living shall not be hunted

There is an alternative story. Photographic safaris, community-based conservancies, ecotourism, habitat restoration — places where animals are alive, acting, teaching and befriending the land. Countries such as Kenya derive millions annually from tourism centred on live wildlife, illustrating the economic potential of presence rather than death.

Governments, donors and tourism operators can shift investment from kill-rates to living populations: train local guides, build lodges, invest in habitat, share benefits equitably. Donor agencies and foundations can fund buy-outs of trophy-hunting concessions, retraining of workers, sanctuary solutions for captive-bred animals, and enforce benefit-sharing models with communities.

The public can vote with their dollars and voices: choose operators that refuse cub-petting or “walk with lions” experiences; boycott souvenirs derived from hunted animals; ask airlines and freight carriers to refuse trophy shipments. More than 40 airlines have already refused to transport trophies, creating a practical barrier to the practice.

Scientific policy must catch up: conservation of longevity requires age-based protection, recognition of the value of older individuals, social-structure preservation in animal populations. The names Bekoff and Kopf become signposts: Bekoff urging ethics in our relationship to animals; Kopf injecting demographic, ecological rigour into conservation thinking.

Five concrete actions you can take

1. Support and lobby for robust trade bans — Encourage your country to strengthen import-export bans on trophies, following examples of France (2015), Netherlands (2016), Australia (2018), Colombia (2019) and Belgium (2024).

2. Pressure airlines and freight carriers — Ask transport companies to refuse trophy shipments; disrupting the logistics can reduce demand.

3. Choose ethical tourism — Travel with operators that avoid petting big-cats, avoid cub interactions. Follow community-based tourism models, where photographic safaris and conservancies return revenue to local people and build pride in living wildlife.

4. Support on-the-ground investigations and worker protections — Fund or back NGOs that uncover captive-breeding abuses, secure whistle-blower rights, expose secret farms, advocate for legal accountability. NGOs such as IFAW, World Animal Protection, Born Free and OceanCare provide campaign toolkits, investigations and advocacy that can be channelled into localised, measurable programs.

5. Advocate for longevity-based conservation — Ask governments and conservation agencies to protect older, experienced animals: no quotas targeting large older males; policies that preserve social structure; recognise older animals as ecological assets, not disposable trophies.

Redefining value

If we don’t rewrite the ledger, conservation becomes little more than a record of extinction. Removing ancient matriarchs and patriarchs, sacrificing species for photos and parts, breaking ecosystems for profit — this is not stewardship, it is extraction disguised as sport.

There is another way to value life: through the living lineage of generations.

To protect wild animals is to safeguard a world worth living in. To honor them as citizens of Earth, not as trophies.

The names bear repeating: Marc Bekoff, who teaches us that animal cultures matter; Dr Keller Kopf et al., who document the demographic realities and ecological consequences of removing older animals; World Animal Protection, which exposes the captive-lion farms; IFAW, which maps the global trade of trophies; OceanCare and other watchdogs who trace the money and the bodies. They are witnesses across disciplines: scientists, ethicists, campaigners, and journalists who document both the cruelty and the pathways to change.

Final reckoning

We end where we began: with a question about how we measure value. If conservation is about flourishing, then trophies are a poor metric. Science shows that removing elders undermines social structure and resilience; trade data shows systemic extraction rather than carefully managed harvest; field work and testimony reveal cruelty and concealment in captive-breeding systems.

In importing nations, citizens can demand laws that close trophy channels and support conservation that empowers local communities. In producing countries, governments must implement and enforce bans on captive breeding, ensure local benefit from living wildlife, guarantee transparency and accountability. Donors can fund transitions for communities formerly dependent on trophy hunting, and support sanctuary solutions for captive animals. Scientists can persist in documenting the roles older animals play — so that populations are managed for longevity, not for maximum kill.

And you can make a difference: by refusing the souvenir, choosing the non-hunting safari, giving voice to the silent ones. Real fortune lies not in what is killed, but in what endures: herds roaming endlessly, prides at dusk, elephants drinking deep, leopards vanishing into the rock.

We can rewrite the ledger. It will take law, science, finance and stubborn cultural work. But it is possible. Choose to measure wealth by presence, memory and the elders that hold ecosystem knowledge — not by skulls and trophies. Choose to act, to press for import bans, to support community livelihoods, and to refuse souvenir economies that profit from extinction. In doing so we not only protect animals; we protect the fragile, valuable, and shared intelligence of life itself.

And yet, make no mistake: for those who call it 'sport,' understand this: trophy hunting is murder. Trophy hunting kills thousands of animals every year, pushing species toward extinction. It destroys ecosystems. It disrupts wildlife populations. This is not conservation. This is destruction.

We must act—now.

References

1. African Wildlife Foundation. (2017, July 21). Trophy hunting not an option to finance conservation in Africa. African Wildlife Foundation. https://www.awf.org/news/trophy-hunting-not-option-finance-conservation-africa

2. Bekoff, M. (2024, December 4). Trophy hunting, fear of aging, and the loss of animal cultures. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/es/blog/la-caceria-por-trofeos-el-miedo-a-la-vejez-y-la-perdida-de-las-culturas-animales

3. BBC News. (n.d.). Research lion killed in “unethical” alleged trophy hunt shooting. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3wneejwg0vo

4. Born Free Foundation. (n.d.). Canned hunting & lion farming. Born Free. https://www.bornfree.org.uk/canned-hunting/

5. Discover Wildlife. (2021, July 19). The truth about canned hunting: What is it and how is it regulated? Discover Wildlife. https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/the-truth-about-canned-hunting-what-is-it-and-how-is-it-regulated

6. Duignan, B. (n.d.). Fish in a barrel, lions in a cage: Canned hunting in the U.S. and South Africa. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/fish-in-a-barrel-lions-in-a-cage-canned-hunting-in-the-us-and-south-africa

7. EMS Foundation. (2021, May 21). Trophy hunting of leopards in South Africa - Public statement. Conservation Action Trust. https://www.conservationaction.co.za/trophy-hunting-of-leopards-in-south-africa/

8. EUnews Italy. (2025, June 19). Sport hunting in Tanzania threatens the Maasai, but the EU has no plans to ban trophy imports. EUnews.it. https://www.eunews.it/en/2025/06/19/sport-hunting-in-tanzania-threatens-the-maasai-but-the-eu-has-no-plans-to-ban-trophy-imports/

9. Hall, J. (2018, October 15). Cecil the lion died amid controversy — here’s what’s happened since. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cecil-african-lion-anniversary-death-trophy-hunting-zimbabwe

10. Humane World for Animals. (2025, July 2). Ten years ago, a trophy hunter killed Cecil. Here’s how we’re continuing to honor the lion’s legacy. Humane World for Animals. https://www.humaneworld.org/en/blog/honoring-cecil-the-lion-legacy

11. International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). (2016). Killing for trophies: An analysis of global trophy hunting trade. International Fund for Animal Welfare. https://d1jyxxz9imt9yb.cloudfront.net/resource/36/attachment/regular/Killing_For_Trophies.pdf

12. Kopf, K., et al. (2025). Loss of Earth’s old, wise, and large animals. Science. Volume 387, Issue 6729, January 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ado2705

13. OceanCare. (2016). Trophy hunting – fact sheet. OceanCare. https://www.oceancare.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Factsheet_Trophaeenjagd_Eisbaer_EN_2016.pdf

14. World Animal News. (2025, October 15). Over 1.2 million bears have been slaughtered for trophies in the U.S. in 25 years. World Animal News. https://worldanimalnews.com/2025/10/15/over-1-2-million-bears-have-been-slaughtered-for-trophies-in-the-u-s-in-25-years/

15. World Animal Protection. (n.d.). Lion breeding industry in South Africa and illegal trade. World Animal Protection. https://www.worldanimalprotection.es/noticias-y-blogs/noticias/industria-cria-leones-sudafrica-comercio-ilegal/

16. World Animal Protection. (n.d.). Trophy hunting - Campaign. World Animal Protection. https://www.worldanimalprotection.es/nuestras-campanas/vida-silvestre/explotacion-comercial/caza-trofeos/

17. World Animal Protection. (2022, August 10). Trophy hunting endangers South Africa’s tourism industry. World Animal Protection. https://www.worldanimalprotection.es/noticias-y-blogs/noticias/la-caza-de-trofeos-pone-en-peligro-la-industria-turistica-de-sudafrica/