Originally published 2019-04-15.
In early 2019 Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife pressed ahead with a plan to let trophy hunters shoot at least 1,250 hippos in the Luangwa Valley, one of Africa’s last great hippo strongholds. Officials called it a cull to protect the river and prevent disease. Conservation groups called it a commercial hunt in disguise. After an international outcry and opposition from local communities, the government cancelled the plan in May 2019.
Here is how the scheme was supposed to work, why it was so controversial, and what it tells us about the future of hippos.
How the hippo hunt was set up
The Luangwa River in eastern Zambia supports one of the densest hippo populations on the continent. The plan to reduce it dated back to a contract signed in 2015 with Mabwe Adventures, a Zambian company owned by Leon Joubert. That contract was put off year after year, then revived and approved again in 2019, as reported at the time by the Conservation Action Trust.
Although it was described as a population-control measure, the killing was to be done largely by paying foreign hunters. According to the Born Free Foundation, the hunts were being marketed through a South African outfitter, Siluwe Hunting, with packages reportedly priced at about $5,590 for two hippos. Critics argued that a genuine management cull would be carried out by wildlife staff, not sold as trophy hunting.
The location mattered as much as the numbers. The Luangwa Valley, home to South Luangwa National Park, is famous for walking safaris and for the sight of hundreds of hippos packed into the river’s bends in the dry season. Tourism there supports lodges, guides and village jobs, so a large hunt in the same landscape risked damaging the very attraction that brings visitors and money into the area.
Shifting reasons for the cull
Over the years the authorities offered several justifications. The first was disease: anthrax can spread among hippos, particularly in the dry season when animals crowd into shrinking pools and carcasses contaminate the water. The next was low water in the Luangwa River. By 2019 the main reason given was that there were simply too many hippos for the habitat.
Born Free’s president and co-founder, Will Travers, summed up the critics’ view: “The justifications for this cull are like a sea of shifting sand.” His colleague Dr Mark Jones went further, arguing that hunting was not an appropriate way to manage wildlife and that rainfall in the valley had been fairly steady, undermining the drought argument. He described the plan as “a thinly veiled opportunity for a few people to make a bit of money.”
The Zambian government did not publish detailed population surveys to back its case at the time, which made it hard for outsiders to judge whether any reduction was needed.
Are hippos endangered?
The common hippopotamus is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, the global register of threatened species. At the last full assessment in 2017 there were thought to be roughly 115,000 to 130,000 left in the wild across sub-Saharan Africa. Some populations are stable, but others have collapsed: in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, numbers fell from around 29,000 in the 1970s to fewer than 1,000 by 2005, mostly because of poaching during conflict.
Hippos face two main threats. The first is habitat loss, as rivers and wetlands are dammed, drained or farmed. The second is hunting for meat and for their large canine teeth, which are used as a substitute for elephant ivory. International trade in hippo parts is regulated under Appendix II of CITES, which means exports need permits but are not banned. Conservationists warned that a large legal hunt in Zambia could feed that trade.
Why the plan was cancelled
In May 2019 Joubert confirmed that the government had told his company it was reversing its decision, saying it had “bowed to pressure.” He called it a temporary setback and suggested the company might seek other hunting rights in the valley.
The pressure came from two directions. Internationally, wildlife charities and tourists threatened Zambia’s reputation as a safari destination. Locally, community leaders opposed the hunt. Isaac Banda of the Zambian National Community Resource Boards Association argued that the hippos were worth far more alive to the tourism economy and that decisions should not be made without consulting the people who live alongside the animals.
Culls, trophy hunting and living with hippos
It is worth being fair to the other side of the argument. Wildlife managers in several countries do sometimes reduce animal numbers when a population outgrows its habitat or disease threatens it, and hippos are not harmless neighbours. They are among the most dangerous large animals in Africa: they overturn boats, raid crops at night and kill people every year. Conflict between hippos and farmers is a real problem in many riverside villages.
Supporters of trophy hunting also argue that fees paid by hunters can fund conservation and local communities. The difficulty is transparency. When the reasons keep changing, the population data is not published and the profits flow to private outfitters, it becomes hard to tell management from commerce, and that is what doomed the Luangwa plan.
For readers who care about hippos, the practical steps are straightforward: support credible conservation groups working in hippo range, choose safari operators that share revenue with local communities, and never buy carved “ivory” of uncertain origin, which may well be hippo tooth.
Sources: image via Pixabay; Conservation Action Trust: Zambian pseudo hippo cull cancelled (June 2019); Truth Theory (original 2019 report); Wikipedia: Hippopotamus.
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