Environmental Ethics and Trophy Hunting

1. Introduction

The publication in 1980 of J. Baird Callicott's "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair" introduced the conflict for environmental management and policy between animal liberation and environmental ethics. ¹ Hunting provides a prime example of this still unresolved controversy.

I have found no published source that condemns hunting per se. There is a spectrum in the environmental literature. At one end is the view that hunting is justified only for self protection and for food, where no other reasonable alternative is available. Most writers also agree that hunting is sometimes justified in order to protect endangered species and threatened ecosystems where destructive species have been introduced or natural predators have been exterminated. Others accept hunting as part of cultural tradition or for the psychological well being of the hunter, sometimes extended to include recreational hunting when practiced according to "sporting" rules. Nowhere in the literature, so far as I am aware, is hunting for fun, for the enjoyment of killing, or for the acquisition of trophies defended. However, as I argue towards the end of this paper, trophy hunting is essential in parts of Africa for the survival of both people and wildlife.

Throughout this paper, I assume that animals have interests, and that we have an obligation to take some account of those interests: roughly, that we are entitled to kill animals only in order to promote or protect some nontrivial human interest ² and where no reasonable alternative strategy is available. This position is roughly that presented by Donald VanDeVeer (1979). Versions of it are widely defended in the literature, though there are different views about which human interests are sufficiently significant to justify killing. I restrict my discussion to cases where the interest in question cannot reasonably be achieved without killing animals. For instance, killing in self defense is justified only if no effective nonlethal means is available; killing to secure trophies would be justified (if at all) only if trophies are an important nonsubstitutable good, or if some other important substitute good cannot reasonably be achieved by any other means.

2. Wildlife Management: the Conventional Western View

Hunting has attracted controversy and opposition--often very vehement opposition--in most countries of the North. In the United Kingdom, confrontations between fox hunters and animal rights groups have often resulted in violent scenes between hunters and "hunt saboteurs." Organizations that oppose the hunting of marine mammals, notably Greenpeace, have attempted to physically prevent hunting, sometimes resulting in damage to hunting equipment and ships and injuries to protesters, destruction or confiscation of their vessels, and arrests. Many members of the public support these tactics, and many more support the goal of putting an end to all killing of marine mammals, particularly commercial hunting. For instance, a 1978 poll found that 93% of New Zealanders opposed all whale hunting, a remarkable consensus in a pluralistic society. ³ According to a 1995 Gallup poll, 80% of Britons disapprove of fox hunting. ⁴

Anti-hunting organizations present a number of arguments against both hunting in general and specifically the hunting of marine mammals, elephants, large carnivores, great apes, rhinos, and other large ungulates. In this paper, I concentrate particularly on elephants.

Some common arguments against hunting include the following, each of which is discussed in more detail later.

• Hunting wrongfully deprives animals of something that is valuable to them--their lives (Regan 1983, Taylor 1996). Killing, and not merely successful stalking, is recognized by both supporters and opponents as a central feature of hunting. As Roger King (1991) notes, for proponents of hunting such as José Ortega y Gasset (1972) and Paul Shepherd (1973), the central meaning of hunting is killing, and killing is essential to "Participation in the life cycle of nature" (King 1991, 80). Ann Causey says, "The one element that stands out as truly essential to the authentic hunting experience is the kill" (Causey 1989, 332). Some ecofeminists believe that hunting is a prime example of patriarchal oppression...