I recently spoke to a girl (a Boer) from South Africa and this was her take on the situation.
Occasionally, the old dominant male elephant in a particular herd becomes impotent due to age. However, he is still powerful and tough enough to keep the younger males away from “his” female elephants. This can go on for years before a younger male finally dethrones the old male. In the meantime, the herd is shrinking and in danger of collapsing. The dominant male has to keep the mature females pregnant in order to keep the herd strong. These old bulls have to be eliminated. Before poaching became such a problem, a few herds with old impotent dominant males were not a problem because there were enough other, thriving herds to keep the general population up. But in today’s world with poaching rampant and shrinking herds, something has to be done.
In the past, African governments would simply hire a local hunter to kill the old bull, however, Safari Hunting companies started offering these governments huge amounts of money to allow the foreign hunter to do the killing. If these hunters are not allowed to bring their trophy into the US, they would not likely pay these exorbitant hunting fees.
What percentage of this money actually gets in the hands of the people charged with protecting the elephants? Good question. However, she stated that even if it a small percentage, at least it represents a increase in the merger budget allocated to the Government agency that controls elephant protection.
Does anyone know if this is a fact? If not, I guess we could jump over to the Humble Opinion forum.
The factual question, so far as I can tell, is “Is it really true that sometimes a non-reproducing bull will hold onto control of a herd, and that it’s thus best for the herd if that alpha bull is killed?”. Let’s please stick to that question.
Couple of problems. First, elephant herds are matriarchal, led by the oldest female, bulls bugger off and live alone in or in small all male groups. Second, there are no capital B Boers in South Africa. That term got dropped sometime in the 1920’s, she was an Afrikaner*.
The money spent on hunting one elephant, more than my middle-class South African annual salary mind you, goes to the owners of said elephant. Either the government run national park or a private reserve. What they do with the money is up to them.
*Not really important to the question at hand, just correcting something that bugs me.
I know that political comments are not allowed, but am I alone in thinking, when I read the OP, that this was some kind of allegory relating to the current situation in the USA?
Bulls do not live with herds that have females in them. Elephant herds are separated into bachelor herds and female and younglings herds. When it is time to mate a male elephant will seek out a female herd and select a mate. If she agrees they mate and then he goes back to his herd.
The usual argument for trophy hunting is that the real threat to elephants is loss of habitat and if the locals can make money guiding trophy hunts then there is a reason for the locals to keep the habitat elephant friendly and not try to farm those lands.
I think the topic here is the Trump administration’s stance on allowing elephant trophies to be brought into the United States.
It was banned during the Obama administration. From his statements on the subject, Trump seems to be personally inclined to let the ban continue. But apparently he’s not adamant on the issue and is open to the possibility of allowing the trophies to be brought to America.
That may be the reason for why the question is relevant, but discussing that issue would be a political discussion, and hence suited for some other forum.
For South Africa, in particular, this is a giant load of crap - SANParks, the government entity associated with elephant conservation, generally meets or exceeds its operating costs from its own revenue - by a 1.16:1 ratio last year, for instance. There’s simply no need to sell elephant body parts to make up any shortfall.
That “meagre” budget, by the way, is 1-and-a-quarter trillion ZAR. I know Rands are not dollars (boy, do I know it these last 2 weeks) but that’s still nowhere near “meagre”