Big game hunters target Zimbabwe

Foreign big game hunters bid $1.5m (€1.2m) to shoot leopards, lions, elephants and buffaloes in Zimbabwe this year, the state media reported yesterday.

In an annual state auction for hunting trophy “bags” on Friday, 64 local agents and foreign hunters, including bidders from Austria, Germany, Russia, Spain and the United States, paid a fixed fee of 40 dollars for a license to kill a lion, the state Sunday Mail newspaper reported.

Bidding for elephants exceeded $20,000 (€16,600).

The season for hunting in selected hunting areas runs from May to October.

The state Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said the hunting revenues were to be used in conservation programs across the country, the newspaper, a government mouthpiece, said.

It said despite the collapse of regular tourism amid political and economic turmoil in the troubled southern African nation, international interest in hunting remained high.

Illegal hunting by corrupt officials, military officers and their foreign guests increased in many rural areas after the chaotic often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000.

In the worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe is suffering acute shortages of food, hard currency and gasoline. Poaching of animals for meat has also risen, conservationists say.

Zimbabwe insists its bush habitat is overpopulated by elephants that cause environmental damage and destroy crops.

In recorded cases last year, elephants killed 12 people in Zimbabwe, mostly by charging and trampling villagers trying to protect their crops.

Lions were reported to have killed 17 cattle belonging to a traditional leader in western Zimbabwe in November, but there were no fatal attacks on humans.

Crocodiles, the most dangerous species to man in Zimbabwe, dragged away and ate 13 people – including children fishing and playing at river banks - according to the Communal Areas Management Program, a conservation group.