Zimbabwe: Bow hunting of buffalo permitted
To attract tourists and trophy hunters to Zimbabwe, the southern African country is permitting the hunting of Cape buffalo with bow and arrow.
Zimbabwe intends to allow hunters to shoot Cape buffalo with bow and arrow. This is meant to broaden tourism in order to «luremore people to Zimbabwe», a spokesperson for the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority told the news agency AFP on Saturday. The resulting revenue would be channelled into environmental protection, he added. The number of Cape buffalo in Zimbabwe runs into the hundreds of thousands. The wildlife of the southern African country already attracts tourists and hunters from the USA, Europe, and South Africa.
Perhaps the best-known wildlife park is Hwange on the border with Botswana. It was there that a poacher from the United States shot the famous lion Cecil with a bow and arrow in 2015.
The market for wealthy recreational hunters in search of trophies is becoming increasingly competitive in Africa. Last week, Zimbabwe's neighbour Botswana lifted a five-year ban on elephant hunting.
Zimbabwe announced this month that it had sold nearly one hundred elephants to China and Dubai over the past six years for a total of 2.7 million dollars. The country justified this by citing an overpopulation of elephants.
Bow hunting is controversial even among hunters, as it carries a higher risk of the animal being only wounded and suffering pain. In 2015, the famous lion Cecil was illegally shot with a bow and arrow in Zimbabwe; it was only the following day that the animal was put out of its misery. In general, bow hunting of lions is permitted in Zimbabwe.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
