'Hunting for Conservation' Backfires - ScienceNOW

'Hunting for Conservation' Backfires - ScienceNOW: "Now the lion population has dwindled to less than a tenth of that. In the 1980s and 1990s, African nations started to think an old practice might hold the solution to saving the lion: trophy hunting. They hoped that by allowing rich game-chasers to shoot a few animals, landowners would have an incentive to conserve lion habitats and keep the species alive while boosting their local economies. In the meantime, it became conventional wisdom to blame the decline on factors such as conversion of lion habitat for agriculture, disease, and killings by locals upset over lion attacks on people or livestock. But the newest research, to be published in an upcoming issue of Conservation Biology, shows that at least in Tanzania—home to more lions than any other country—that isn’t the case."