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Insights into the Management of Large Carnivores for Profitable Wildlife-Based Land Uses in African Savannas

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  • Paul J Funston
  • Rosemary J Groom
  • Peter A Lindsey

Abstract

Large African predators, especially lions (Panthera leo) and leopards (Panthera pardus), are financially valuable for ecotourism and trophy hunting operations on land also utilized for the production of other wildlife species for the same purpose. Predation of ungulates used for trophy hunting can create conflict with landholders and trade off thus exists between the value of lions and leopards and their impact on ungulate populations. Therefore productionist and conservation trade-offs are complexly graded and difficult to resolve. We investigated this with a risk-benefit analysis on a large private wildlife production area in Zimbabwe. Our model showed that lions result in substantial financial costs through predation on wild ungulates that may not be offset by profits from hunting them, whereas the returns from trophy hunting of leopards are projected to exceed the costs due to leopard predation. In the absence of additional income derived from photo-tourism the number of lions may need to be managed to minimize their impact. Lions drive important ecological processes, but there is a need to balance ecological and financial imperatives on wildlife ranches, community wildlife lands and other categories of multiple use land used for wildlife production. This will ensure the competitiveness of wildlife based land uses relative to alternatives. Our findings may thus be limited to conservancies, community land-use areas and commercial game ranches, which are expansive in Africa, and should not necessarily applied to areas where biodiversity conservation is the primary objective, even if hunting is allowed there.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul J Funston & Rosemary J Groom & Peter A Lindsey, 2013. "Insights into the Management of Large Carnivores for Profitable Wildlife-Based Land Uses in African Savannas," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-8, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0059044
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059044
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Peter Andrew Lindsey & Guy Andrew Balme & Vernon Richard Booth & Neil Midlane, 2012. "The Significance of African Lions for the Financial Viability of Trophy Hunting and the Maintenance of Wild Land," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(1), pages 1-10, January.
    2. Karyl Whitman & Anthony M. Starfield & Henley S. Quadling & Craig Packer, 2004. "Sustainable trophy hunting of African lions," Nature, Nature, vol. 428(6979), pages 175-178, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Robin Lines & Dimitrios Bormpoudakis & Panteleimon Xofis & Joseph Tzanopoulos, 2021. "Modelling Multi-Species Connectivity at the Kafue-Zambezi Interface: Implications for Transboundary Carnivore Conservation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-15, November.

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