Trophy fever: they say they kill the weak. In reality, they destroy the strongest.

Unfortunately, the industry of paid killings — when animals are shot in the wild for entertainment and this is called “sport” — is growing rapidly. And not only in our country, Russia, but all over the world. It turned out that this sphere can bring in colossal money — and the industry began to grow precisely during the coronavirus pandemic, when many people were sitting at home in isolation and could not think of anything better than going into the wild to shoot animals. Since then, every year, the number of issued quotas for shooting wild animals has been growing in parallel with the multiple increase in the number of the so-called “trophy hunters” themselves.

I have already said earlier in my materials that, in our country alone, regions have set a course for the development of trophy hunting and have started a race over who can offer the best conditions to those who want to kill wild animals. Despite political conflicts, Americans, Europeans, and wealthy trophy hunters from other countries gladly come to our country. And some time ago, Roslesinforg publicly called loggers and hunters the “real masters of Russia’s forests,” including stating that one third of all publicly accessible forest hunting grounds in the country had already been handed over to the industry of paid killings.

That is the situation.

How to fight this is unclear. Especially since the more strongly the economy becomes tied to such an industry, the more impossible any further way out becomes! After all, more hunting weapons and equipment are already being produced, companies have opened, infrastructure and advertising have been established, and millions of armed trophy hunters cannot imagine their lives without shooting at living targets in the Russian Taiga.

I see only one way out of this crisis: to seek a change in the entire existing protected-area system of the country and to create Territories of Full Ecological Tranquility (TFET), which will become compulsory sanctuaries for wildlife. At this point, simply saving individual species will no longer be enough, and after some time no one will be able to stop the rapid ecological degradation. There will simply be nothing left to save.

Today, in this material, I want to talk about the following. In our country, there are active attempts to expand the killing of animals listed in the Red Data Book; lobbying groups are openly calling for direct trophy hunting of these animals to be legalized. Such proposals have come, among others, from high-ranking deputies, and government agencies have officially considered them.

They say that they will kill weak animals, including old ones and those deemed “unnecessary” by people. Yet to anyone who has even a minimal understanding of biological systems, the methodological inconsistency of such arguments is immediately clear! But, unfortunately, many people hear this and, without understanding the depth of the issue at all, begin actively using this argument to justify killing animals for trophies. And, as a rule, we are talking specifically about rare animals in populations that are on the brink of extinction.

I will begin with the fact that the very logic of any trophy hunt is to find the most powerful, enormous, or beautiful animal in order to kill it, skin it, and hang that skin on the wall. Or to cut off any other trophy as a long-lasting memory — something one can later be proud of and boast about to friends. I think everyone understands these things!

Can you imagine a wealthy American businessman going on a trophy hunt in Africa and deliberately searching for a sick old lion that, in its final exhaustion, is struggling to breathe, counting down the last days of its life? Look at any photographs from trophy hunts in Africa, Russia, or any other country in the world — wealthy trophy hunters pose proudly beside magnificent, strong animals.

Therefore, even here, one could already reliably refute the trophy-hunting community’s claims that they remove the “weak and old.”

But I want to show you another side as well — the scientific one. These are things that are generally ignored by everyone, and many have never even heard anything about them.

According to scientific data, recreational trophy hunting causes the disappearance of older age classes among wild animals. At the same time, it is precisely old individuals that make an enormous contribution to the cultural transmission of information, the demographic stability of populations, and ecosystem functions. Moreover, young individuals are not capable of replacing their functions!

It also causes the loss of the so-called “demographic buffer,” which stabilizes populations during environmental fluctuations and reproductive failures.

And for Red Data Book animals — that is, animals on the brink of extinction — this is critical for two reasons.

First, such species usually have a low maximum rate of population recovery, which means that a mistake in mortality instantly becomes irreparable.

Second, it is often the older and most experienced individuals that are the carriers of BEHAVIOR, routes (they lead others), risk-avoidance strategies, and SOCIAL MEMORY. Again, these are precisely the qualities that directly increase the survival of the entire group and the population as a whole.

I have studied a great many scientific works precisely on the role adult individuals play in the animal world. For example, in experimental studies on African elephants, scientists directly show a social model in which older matriarchs have a better ability to recognize the level of predatory threat. This means they make higher-quality decisions more effectively in situations involving risk to the family. I came across good descriptions from scientists’ field studies, saying that individuals aged 60+ demonstrate the greatest success in leadership during large-scale foraging movements, which is directly linked to the enormous experience and knowledge of old elephants.

Now imagine hunters coming in and shooting elephants in groups where those elephants were family leaders and not only led the others, but also taught them, passed on knowledge, and protected them from threats. In one moment, the population loses a key link — in essence, the core of the family — which provokes a sharp decline in the chances of survival for the rest.

Another example can be given with lions, which live there as well, in Africa. As you know, lions live in prides, and preserving the social structure is extremely important. The point is that when a coalition of males changes, the new residents kill the cubs of the previous coalition and drive out growing individuals. And when people carry out “trophy shooting,” they increase the probability and frequency of male replacements, which means infanticide increases, and young lion cubs die as a result. Thus, indirect secondary deaths are added to the direct killing committed by a wealthy trophy hunter in the African savannas, and this destroys the structure of lion populations.

For those who did not know, I will also clarify that lions are on the brink of extinction and almost all of them have already been destroyed. Moreover, people have begun mass-breeding lions in captivity for further sale to wealthy trophy hunters: tourist-hunters arrive, pay money, and a frightened domestic lion is driven out under their gun. All the hunter has to do is pull the trigger and take a photo with the killed animal.

Mountain ungulates should also be mentioned; they are a favorite “pleasure” of wealthy trophy hunters. They like running through the mountains and killing wild animals there. The thing is that mountain ungulates usually have large, beautiful horns, and trophy hunters love collecting them! They constantly hold competitions over who can get the animal with the biggest and most beautiful horns. They win prizes, different statuses.

So, according to scientific research, for mountain ungulates, trophy hunting is often selective for heritable traits — horns, body mass, and so on. I have come across good scientific studies on bighorn sheep, for example; scientists describe well the process by which trophy hunting provokes an evolutionary response in a population — body mass and horn size decrease. On top of this, shooting removes males with high “breeding values” before their reproductive peak; in other words, the system literally burns out the genetic contribution of large, fast-growing males.

This very fact refutes that popular thesis, the claim that “trophy hunting removes those who have already given everything to nature.” This is pure lying!

Very little is said about this. Many people know absolutely nothing about biological interconnections and blindly trust any thesis that is criminal toward wildlife!

In my view, what are we even arguing about here? If there are scientific data showing that over the last 50 years the abundance of vertebrate wildlife species on Earth has declined by 73%, soon there will be no one left to protect. People will finish off the last wild animal.

And trophy hunters, along with the officials serving their interests, tell us: “Well, let us shoot rare animals; we will even pay for it.”

Would you not like, gentlemen, to pay for nature protection instead — to finance the creation and expansion of nature reserves WITHOUT the right to kill? Can you really not live without blood and photographs with dead animals? Are you unable to overcome this thirst for killing?

I remind all allies that, although it has not been possible yet due to a lack of resources and time, we are planning to launch full-scale projects to protect the key predators of the Russian Taiga in the very near future. I am against sporting killings! I am against trophy hunting.

Share this material — pass it on. Let us tell people the truth!

© PAVEL PASHKOV