January 13, 2025 • 68 mins
Can hunting be an effective way to manage human-wildlife conflict? What happens when well-intentioned wildlife protection measures backfire? I spoke with Jens Ulrik Høgh, a Scandinavian hunting journalist, to find answers to these questions through the lens of Romania's bear management crisis. When hunting was banned in 2016 under pressure from animal rights groups, it led to an unexpected surge in human-wildlife conflict, with 300 people being mauled and 26 killed by bears that had lost their fear of humans.
Through many examples from Romania, Africa and Scandinavia, Jens explores how regulated hunting can serve as a vital conservation tool. He challenges common misconceptions about trophy hunting and explains how hunting tourism provides critical financial incentives for protecting wildlife habitats. We discuss how local communities in various parts of the world depend on hunting not just for wildlife management but also for economic sustainability. This highlights the complex relationship between wildlife conservation and local people's livelihoods.
The conversation concludes with an optimistic outlook on the future of hunting, supported by growing public acceptance. Jens also provides valuable insights into how hunters can better communicate about their activities, emphasising the importance of honesty, factual accuracy and sensitivity to others' feelings. His practical advice focuses on building bridges between hunters and non-hunters rather than creating further divisions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is episode 193, and you're listening to the Conservationand Science podcast,
where we take a deep dive into topics of ecology, conservationaction, and human wildlife interactions.
And I'm your host, Tommy Serafin. Ski.
And I'm losing my voice.
As you can hear, I'm still recovering from some bad throat infection.
(00:22):
So I'm not going to drag this introduction for too longbecause I simply can't.
This is the first episode in 2025,and we are coming back to the topic of hunting.
You might say, although hunting is not the primary subject. It'ssort of in the background.
And we are talking about two other, topics as a primary topics.
(00:47):
First is human wildlife conflict.
And we going to use example of situationswith bears in conflict with brown bears in Romania.
And then later on we are going to talk about trophy hunting.
And we haven't spoke about trophy huntingfor quite a while on the podcast.
And I remember at some point I said, like,I'm not talking about trophy hunting on the podcast anymore
(01:13):
because everything was already said and is just like, you know, boring,which is over and over the same thing.
But I figure enough time has passed that it would be usefulto revisit the topic of trophy hunting from the perspective
of human wildlife conflict and habitat protection,especially with our guest today.
(01:34):
Our guest today is Jens Ulrik Hu and he is a hunting journalist.
He is a founder and editor of many hunting magazines.
He was also doing some communication workfor massive hunting organizations like CIC or Nordic Safari Club.
But obviously in this episode and as in most of my episodes, our guests,are speaking for themselves, expressing their personal opinions.
(02:00):
And that's no different this time around.
So, folks, if human wildlife conflict and habitat conservationare your things and you're curious to learn about hunting
and what role it plays in those things,then this episode is definitely for you.
So enjoy the show.
yes. Welcome to the show.
(02:22):
Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to have you. And I'm delightedyou accepted the invitation.
Oh, I enjoy being here.
Excellent.
Listen, before we jump into all the interesting topics of,conservation, hunting, human wildlife conflict and the likes,
could you give our listeners a short version of who you are,what you do, and and, what was the history that brought you,
(02:47):
that you do what you do?
Of course. Very briefly.
I started out as a hunter here in Scandinavia, where I live.
I'm the first hunter in my family, so I started from scratch.
I became very interested,
and engaged in hunting.
And, from there, I went into freelance writing.
(03:10):
At first for hunting magazines.
And gradually I started to explain hunting to non hunters in mainstreammedia, at first in our local languages
and for the last couple of years, I've been doing it as a job, for,hunting organization we have here in Scandinavia trying to,
(03:32):
engaging the debate about hunting and explainwhat's up and down in, in some of these
very complex questions,especially to the non hunters of this world. Yes.
And this is very, very important to have this conversation.
Like you said, we've known the huntersif we well want to preserve hunting, for the future.
(03:53):
Listen. Yes,you have vast experience and your experience spans multiple continents.
Africa, India, in Europe, in Romania,you've been in a human wildlife conflict zones.
And I want to start with the human wildlife conflict.
Did you notice any common similarity, any similarities
(04:13):
in those conflict zones,anything that is, you know, universal across the continents?
Very much, very much so.
One similarity, especially when we have human wildlife conflicts that,
endangers people,
endangers their livestock and endangers their livelihoodsall over the place.
(04:36):
You have a quite a, huge level of fear ingrained
in those people living close to these animals and sometimes,
the outside world doesn't really recognize that fear.
So. So I'll give you a good example.
(04:56):
In in Sweden, where I come from,
we have wolves and and the, the rational, you know, the rationalangle on wolves is that they are not really, dangerous to people.
They, they kill a lot of sheep.
And we all know the stories in special circumstances,in a very rare circumstances, they can be dangerous to people.
(05:20):
But people living in the Swedish countryside,where there is a lot of wolves, are typically not very comfortable.
They are afraid. And,
from, from my point of
view, this this is, this is this is the biggest problemwe have here in Europe and Scandinavia.
Is that concern and level of fear that actually drivespeople to want to get rid of these animals.
(05:49):
And it doesn't help. On the contrary,actually to to try and convince these people.
And it especially doesn't help to tell themthat they are irrational or stupid or or, overly sensitive or whatever
we say from, from our point of view. And,but it's actually the same all over the world.
(06:10):
I was just in Romaniaa couple of months ago, visiting this actually tiny area
in Pennsylvania where they have most of the Romanian brown bears.
And these people in the countryside, they are living in constantfear to a degree where they change their daily habits.
(06:32):
They used to be ableto, you know, walk into the forest and collect mushrooms or
let the let the kids, go and play hide and seek and whateverand all that is, is gone.
And they're always thinking, oh, what if I meet a bear?
Where can I go? How how do I ensure my safety?
And and they all know, if not directly, somebody, then they all know ofsomebody who's been either mauled by a bear or even killed by a bear.
(07:00):
And obviously, that level of fear gets to a point where where peopleand that's also a common, thing all over the world
where you have these wildlife conflicts at some point, peoplestart taking matters into their own hands and then things, you know,
(07:21):
running
out of control, in, in Romania,they actually poured honey on the railway tracks.
Oh my word.
So, you know,the person on the train would come and, you know, finish the job.
So the the, they put,
antifreeze glycol in, in meat and put it out for the bears.
(07:41):
And obviously that will kill a bear, but obviouslyit will also kill a dog or a fox or wolf or whatever comes.
So really, really horrible cases of of
poaching,
committed by ordinary people who are basically just afraid.
What role does it play?
(08:02):
The, you know, traditional ways of dealing with those animalsbecause in the conversation they have on their podcast,
it is often quite repeat repeated theme is that people who rememberand live with those dangerous animals for generations,
they well, sort of have to learn to live alongside themand manage them and themselves.
(08:28):
While the conflict is especially severe in the situationswhere that traditional knowledge is gone for whatever reasons,
whether for the reason that animals were not thereand then they come back, or perhaps people lifestyles changed
and then generation to generation,they forgot how to live alongside those animals.
(08:54):
How big of a issue that is? I think it's a it's a big issue.
And the bears is a is a really good example because as I said earlier,I have a lot of experience from Sweden.
I live in Sweden and in Swedenwe have quite a big, very population since decades back.
But we really don't have any problems.
(09:16):
We don't have any human wildlife conflicts of.
Yeah, of of that matters in Sweden.
It's so rare that anything happens.
Whereas in Romania they had the same situation until 2016with an even larger and more concentrated bear population.
And then under pressure from animal rights groups,they more or less overnight banned bear hunting.
(09:41):
Wow. And two things happened in Romania.
One thing is, obviously the bear population started to grow rapidly,
because they had been able to keep it at high population,but sort of level the stable population.
But it started to grow. The bears start to spread,
(10:03):
obviously, because there was not enough room for themin their traditional habitat, and that brought them closer to people.
And since nobody was hunting them surprisingly fast,the bears got habituated.
They they lost their fear of humans.
And then you had,
and more or less exponential, development in, in conflictsand especially because of the conflicts in Romania.
(10:28):
Many.
So you have everything from crop damage, a couple of bearscan really ruin, field of corn or field of goat or whatever.
They, they grow the out there, you have livestock killings.
The big bears kills the the cows.
You have Break-Ins into stables, companies, houses,the bears, just looking for food.
(10:52):
They told us in one place, in one particular village down there,they had to disable the automatic doors in the supermarkets
because the bears found out. Wow. We just walk up to the doorand there's the fruit.
So, so, so a lot of practical problemand of course, in Romania, the worst thing was that because bears
completely lost their fear of people,they started begging for food along the, tourist routes.
(11:19):
And very soon they started to attack peoplethat initially just looking for food in, you know, pockets and whatever.
But since they have fingernails like this, you get hurt,
and eventually you, you had bears that, that killed people.
And from 2016 and until now,
(11:39):
300 people in a actually a very small areaof Romania has been mauled by bears, and 26 people has been killed.
So it's it's a huge problem.
And again, when I compare to Sweden, where we hunt to bears every year,we don't have any such problems.
Same species, fairly populated areas, but no problems with the bears.
(12:04):
When the bear in Sweden smells person, it's out of there.
And it used to be like that in Romania as well.
So what happened now in Romaniais that the reinstated bear hunting from this year. But
in order to sort of reeducate the bearsto install the fear of man in these beasts, so to speak,
(12:25):
I mean, that is going to take a long while because because every bearwho is right now
unafraid of people has to be taken out because theythey won't forget that we have sweets in our pockets.
And werethis was does, welcomed by the local community, the local community
(12:47):
super happy about the opportunityto to to to start hunting the bears again.
The international community is condemning the,the initiative to reinstall bear hunting.
But the problem is that they haven't really,come up with any alternatives.
(13:07):
And the big problem in my point of viewis that the Bears in Romania has been so habituated
by now that this is not a problemthat's going to be fixed with a couple of years of hunting,
I believe, and it's just a theory of mine,but I believe that it will take maybe 10 or 20 years on before the bears
(13:28):
have that previous level of, of fear or respect of of, of people,how long they ban was ban on the ban was for eight years.
For eight years. So so so so it would probably take a long along this.
I think it will take longer. True toto get back to the previous situation because, because
(13:50):
and obviously what they have to do now,which is also a concern, among hunting
organizations around the world who basically applaudsthat they are going to manage the bears with hunting again.
But it's a big concern that in order to get results in the near future,obviously they have to prioritize
(14:10):
to kill the bears that are the most habituated.
First, we drove around there for 3 or 4 days and saw several bears,you know, right next to the road,
just waiting for people to come and throw some some breador some sweets at them.
And of course, those bears have to go firstbecause there's no way to to reeducate those bears.
(14:31):
They have lost the fear of humans.
And the problem is a lot of those bears are females with cubs.
So those cubs are lost as well. It's it's
and just to boil everything down,
you know, back in 2016, I'm sure that these animal rights organizationsreally, really felt that they were doing something good for the bears.
(14:55):
But I'm also sure that in order to get back to the situationwhere bears in Romanian peasants in this area can coexist,
it's going to be a bear bloodbath,because we have gone to the point where there is no other way.
And wasit was the conservation status of bears in any this sort of decline or.
(15:16):
No, they were the problem.
No, it was not.
The problem was that they were not really sure about the numbers.
So what they had to do now, because now,now they are sure that they have way more bears than ever.
So what they have to do now in order to, to reinstatehunting is to also come up with some,
(15:37):
some really good systems of, of of counting the bears,some scientifically sound systems that work
that are a lot better than, than what they inherited from, Ceausescu'sregime back in the days.
But, you know, doing the backwards calculation, it's it's pretty obviousthat that the bears were not threatened in 2016 by any means.
(16:00):
There was there was a lot of bears,and now there is, a hell of a lot of bears. Pardon my French.
So. So what?
What they are doing now is that they have come up with systems to,to count the bears.
And again, it's going to rely heavily on, on huntersand what is new and what's make this makes this,
(16:21):
this system
a lot more, more bulletproof than, than earlieris that they're going to base it mainly on DNA sampling every ten years.
They're going to, you know, in an orderly manner to collect bear shitand, and, and see how many individuals they come up with,
and then they will have some sort of algorithm.
(16:41):
There are there are fantastic methods these dayswith, with this like and environmental DNA.
You can you can you can even find out what mammals are by picking upthe DNA from rivers and kind of like extrapolate that.
So it's, it's it's great.
And it's, it's all come, come, come to the,come to good use within the last ten years or so.
(17:02):
So a lot have, has happened.So I'm not worried that that this, this new,
management by hunting will endanger the Paris in any way.
But I do worry that it will take longerthan people have hoped for to get back to a situation
where human bear conflicts, return to to close 2 to 0 incidents.
(17:25):
Was that a a a matter that we seeand I'm sure you can give examples from other places
and that Romania that the decision makerswere disconnected from the area, the realities on the ground.
So very much so.
And that's another common feature of human like wildlife conflicts,because from from my point of view, it always goes bad when,
(17:53):
when political, decisions are made because these guys are not biology,just state they are not the land use state.
They have no practical experience whatsoeverwith with whatever they're dealing with.
And it's typically at that point that things goes very, very bad.
And, and the problem is that that no matter how powerfula politician feels,
(18:18):
it's very, very hard for them to admitthat they have absolutely no power over nature.
And they have to learn it the hard way every single time.
In Romania, one of one of the issues, on on top of the biological issueshere, is that this particular part of Transylvania
(18:38):
is inhabited almost exclusively by a Hungarian minority in Romania.
So there's also a lot of, you know, political,
bad blood between them and the rest of the Romanians.
And that has had an effect on, on bear management,which is, again, I mean, why it has no, no biological reasons to, to,
(19:03):
to do things differently there.But unfortunately, that has played a role as well.
But what they have said to us now is that they are backon, on a, on a strictly,
fact based tract,
track where they will, where they will try and managed to make the bears
just, you know, based on, on factsand monitoring of, of the bear population from here on.
(19:27):
But of course they do.
I am 100%sure that when we see the first pictures of foreign hunters in Romania
having killed a bear, because this is this is all really happeningas we speak, then we have to shoot stones all over again
and, and so, so in order to get back to a situationwhere they, they have that sort of balance is the wrong way, but,
(19:55):
sort of same status quo, the wrong word,but sort of same status quo as they had before the, the hunting ban.
They, they have to, to, to,
to stand their ground because there's going to be a lot of, of, of stormhitting those politicians all for, for, for sure.
And tell me what is the, what is the balance or what is the proportion,
(20:16):
between local hunters.
And like you said, the tourist hunters who are coming back,I think, I think that in the future when, when the most problematic bear
individuals has been shot, then I think maybe 80% of the huntersor maybe more will be foreign hunters who will pay for the hunts.
(20:39):
But until those problematic bears are taken out, it'sprobably going to be the other way around, because I don't think any
any traveling hunters from abroad would be interested in shootinga three year old bear who is was begging for for sweets at the roadside.
Gotcha, gotcha.
I thought you going to I got you thought you're going to saythat it's going to be too dangerous for them.
(21:02):
But the the opposite. It's just like ait's like a teddy bear over there.
Like I'm saying, I'm not going to shoot them.
And it's, it's actually sad,but it's really those bears that they have to take out first
because they are by far the most dangerous ones,because this is I guess this is what people, people don't understand.
Right? And we saw those videos on YouTube like,oh my God, it's a bear. It's lovely.
(21:24):
And then they forget that that is actual bear.
Like you said, with the with the big massive clawsand it will break your neck with one swift move.
They think they told us many stories as we were there,but one of one of the ones I remember best is that there was this
this elderly woman from a big city in Romaniawho went to the area to see the bears.
(21:45):
And it's not difficult, and all because in the forestthere at the roadside and near to all the big tourist destinations,
they're just waiting for the cars to slow downand throw some food at them.
So, so what they've been trying to do is to tell the touristsnot to feed the bears, but obviously it doesn't work.
So you have this elderly woman, she leaves the carand she starts giving the bear sweets from her pocket.
(22:08):
And this young bear, it's only 150 kilos or somethinglike that, is is eating the sweets.
And then she gets the brilliant idea to take a selfie,to turn her back at the bear and take a selfie for my Instagram profile.
And she does it.
The last picture she takes is with the bear hugging her from behind,just to look for some more sweets inside the that's an awesome,
(22:31):
that's an awesome profile photo.
Yeah, I hope I don't
I don't know if she will heavily mobile though if she was actuallykilled, but I've met a few of those people who were heavily mauled.
And it's it's I mean, most of them wish that they were killed.
It's really not a nice face to be mauled by a bear.
I can I can tell a story about bear from from Poland.I think the listeners never heard that story.
(22:53):
I actually, a couple of years ago went to Poland to see the bearsand the, the gamekeeper, the local gamekeeper was standing as a story.
There was two German huntersand they were crawling into it like a young,
I don't know what's the what's the proper term?
Like a young forest that was plantedand they were crawling underneath it, and there was a bear in there, and
(23:17):
and obviously the bear mauled one of those hunters.
He ended up in a hospital, some, you know,massive amount of stitches, on him, you know, like, really great.
But he wasn't, you know, like, his life wasn't in danger,but he was badly mauled, and his body come to him,
(23:38):
and he says the guy who has mauls is like, hey, I lost my, my heart, my,this was like a memorabilia.
My heart in this in this, in this wouldwould you go there and pick that one for me?
And this guy goes there to the place where he was mauled by the bear.
And a couple of hours later,he lands on the next bed in the hospital, mauled by the same bear.
(24:02):
And the guy goes like, how stupid do you have to be your body?
Just be heavily mauled right?
He was lucky he survived.And now you go for this to the same place the same day.
The pig, his hat, his lucky hunting hat or something like, So,you know, like the people's stupidity knows no bounds, I guess.
(24:22):
Exactly, exactly.
And in, in Romania right now,they have these warning size signs all over the place.
Don't go into the forest. There's bears, but people do. So anyway.
And the last incident that happened when when somebody was actuallykilled was right before I went there in late summer.
(24:43):
And it was a 19 year old Romanian girl.
She was, victim number 26 who actually died from a bear attacksince since 2016.
And it's, of course, it's always super sad story when a life is lost.
But it's also a little bit strange that it took 26 victims,that the difference between her
(25:06):
and the other 25was that she was from one of the biggest cities in Romania.
She was very good looking.
And there was do you don't you know, there was this whole Instagram,Facebook profile, on this pretty young girl
and that created a shitstorm in Romaniaso severe that they called in the parliament from their,
(25:28):
summer vacationto to reinstate hunting because of the public overreaction.
Right. It's all very it'sit's like you could if you do this properly on the from day one.
Yes, exactly. So sorry.
So you may have had the 25, elderly personsbefore her to didn't provoke the same reaction.
(25:50):
I mean, obviously,I think it's a very good idea that they go back to the proven solution
and says, okay, if we want to live with bears,we have to manage them by hunting them.
What do you say? Because I'm sure that that's,
Well, I don't know the
specifics of the situation in Romania,and I'm learning from you a lot right now, but I guess I'm guessing
(26:13):
from the other situations that they were voices like, oh,we should manage them in the non-lethal way.
So were there any voices like that about non-lethal managementand is it doable?
Possible?
Yes, there is a lot of voices like that,and they've been trying to do that for the last eight years.
And as I said during that time,the incidence has been growing exponentially.
(26:38):
So so they have been proven wrong. Unfortunately.
And I would I would take that a little bit furtherbecause I've looked into bear management all over the world.
I don't I don't know of a single place in the worldwhere non-lethal management, of of a big and growing bear
(26:59):
population have shown any kind of success in, in, in preventing these,these set incidents of human wildlife conflict with bears.
Yeah.
But I guess if the issue is the sheer numbersrather than the behavior. Right.
That's both.
I mean, because when the numbers grow, the bearsare, sort of pressured into to, to human,
(27:25):
human populated areas.
So, so, so there's more contactwhen bear bears, no bear number must grow.
And if they're not hunted, then obviously the habituation processjust goes.
It's a good point that the that the growing number is drivingthe habituation is driving their, their habits.
Yes. You mentioned
on the start of this conversation that they werethere was a lot of poaching, going on and obviously,
(27:52):
as usual, in those cases,
if the bear gets poisoned by some antifreeze or something,that's definitely less humane death than from the bullet of the hunter.
Of course. Tell me, tell me, what is your take?
Maybe more general on the role of hunting to one contact counteract,you know, poaching, illegal killing, but also,
(28:19):
I would like you to elaborate on the roleof hunting in preserving the population.
Right. Because people who are listening to thatand they're maybe not that versed in the hunting topics,
they might have a picture now that well, now they want to killall the bears, which again, is like a typical argument.
Yes. Right.
And and of course, that not that's not the casebecause the hunters we have
(28:42):
at least in, in Europe and North Americatoday, basically more or less all over the world.
But, but hunters like, like me and everybody elsewho hunts in Europe, what we call recreational hunters.
And a lot of people dislike that idea, because what it basically meansis that we go hunting because we like to go hunting
is not that we will die from starvation tomorrow. What?
(29:05):
That we cannot feed our kids,
or for that matter, that we make a ton of money on on sellingthe products is simply because we like that choice of lifestyle.
And it's it's so important to us that that obviously we want to be ableto hunt next year and in ten years, and we want to be able to,
(29:26):
teach our children, our grandchildren to go hunting and,and to to give them the same opportunities or better opportunities for,
for going hunting than we have.
So we have a very strong interest in preserving,
the wildlife
and obviously, we know that, that even though we only huntfor comparatively few species, out of the thousands and thousands,
(29:51):
thousands of species out there to preserve those species,we need to work to preserve entire ecosystems.
And to do that, we need to preserve habitat.
So it's sort of a closed circle.
It's in our very own interests to work for the preservation of nature,
(30:13):
because if we don't,we cannot have strong populations of wildlife of game to hunt.
So, so this this is this is the driver all over the world where we arehunting is mentioned as, as an incentive for, for nature conservation
in, in many countries, especially the poorer countries of the world,people like me go on, on a hunting holiday basically,
(30:41):
again, because we like to hunt and it's, it's nice
with the change of scenery and it's exciting to experiencehow they hunt in Africa or North America or wherever.
But if you take a country like Africa,the incentive there is not that the locals,
like to hunt as it is here in Europe.
For us, the incentive there is that somebody from the outside comesin, pays a lot of money for the experience.
(31:06):
So suddenly the local Africans have the opportunity to choose,do we use this land for conventional agriculture?
Meaning cows and goats,or do we use it for natural habitat and and earn some money
on on the hunting, on selling the surplus animals for hunting.
(31:29):
And then that's, that's basically based, boils down to, to a, yeah.
The calculation and in those countries where the preservation of naturalhabitat for hunting is a better deal, this is naturally where we end.
And going back to, to poaching, there's a few differentdefinitions of poaching, but I like to, you know, illegal hunting.
(31:55):
The problem is that it is by definition unregulated.
So nobody knows what's going on.
And there's no facts to, to to build future management on.
And there's no way to say, okay, we think that in this area we can takeout three Buffalo Bulls because these, these guys, are poachers.
(32:17):
They're criminals. They're thieves.
They will take whatever they canjust as a as a regular burglar here or car thief or whatever.
He will not stop because it's not sustainable.What he's doing is the same with poachers.
So that's why poaching illegal hunting is such a massive problem.
(32:37):
There's no way to to regulate it.
There's no way to to to stop it, before it becomes unsustainable.
But a few things,
a few consequences of, of recreational hunting, in hunting, tourism,
that that has an effect on poaching is obviously you have people in thatlocal community now making their livelihood on arranging hunting.
(33:05):
They get money from outsiders to come and hunt.
And of course, if those sites, outsiders cannot come and huntbecause poachers ruin the area, then the business is gone.
So there's a lot of of local incentive to prevent poaching in areaswhere they make money on illegal hunting.
Another thing that that actually prevents a lot of poachingwhen you have legal hunting going on, is that every hunter
(33:32):
typically hunts with a guide and maybe a tracker or whatever.
So it's it's groups of 3 or 4
more people going through the bush with firearmsin a more or less random pattern looking for whatever they're hunting.
Every single one of those groups,
obviously poses a danger to a poacher,because they don't want to run into these people.
(33:54):
So there's there's eyes on the area and there's, there's some, some gunsfloating around, and then nobody wants that conflict.
So a hunting area is a lot more riskyto enter for a poacher than a hairy area with no hunters.
Simply because of that practical factthat people are moving around all the time and keeping us.
(34:15):
Unless there is, like, a such an organized poaching that
that's dangerous for hunters to move into areawhere there are organized gangs of, of poachers.
But that's I guess it's like an entire different story.Yeah, that's an entire different story.
Because again, poachers are not a not difficult,not very different from, from, say, burglars.
(34:36):
I mean, if a burglar has a choice between a house with a dog and a housewith no dog, he will pick the house with no dog, typically.
And it's just the same mechanism. You don't want to take too high risks.
And again, if a poacher knows that there's a high value animal for him,like a rhino, then he will stop at nothing.
(34:57):
Then you will fly in with a helicopter and, and, and shootat whatever comes in his way.
So, so it's it's not it's not a black and white solution, butbut there's a clear tendency
that hunting areas sees much less poaching than non hunting areas.
Because in the non hunting areasnobody has the financial incentive to to keep poaching guys.
(35:21):
I mean at a minimum.
And you don't have this constant patrollingand this constant surveillance.
Well so we know that in many, in many casesthose poachers are rather be game scouts for hunters
and use their knowledge of the area and animals in theyou know, not risking.
(35:42):
Yeah.
Being against the law and usually also getting better moneyor at least legal money by using the same skills.
They still are they still in the bush because they like itand they know the animals, but they kind of like of course
have a different what what we see in southern Africais that if we take Rhino as an example,
(36:02):
which is probably the most valuable animal for the poachers,most of the rhinos are shot on state owned ground.
So most of the rhinos are killed in the national parks,probably because,
as you mentioned, there is unfortunately a little,little bit of corruption going on to say the least.
(36:23):
So you have park rangers, who knows where these animals are.
You even have a lot of cases where Vince has been involved in poachingand and again, on, on the, on the private land where you have
at the moment a lot more rhinos.
And then on the, in the national parks,the rhinos are much better guarded.
(36:44):
So the poachers know that there's a biggerrisk of going into private land.
It happens, of course, but it's, it's it's just,
proportionally more dangerousto be a rhino in a national park in South Africa than on private land.
And that has actually shifted the, the entire ownership balance
(37:05):
because the state owned rhinos has been,you know, depleted, rapidly over the last decades, whereas,
in many cases, the privately owned population has been growing slowly.
So, that there are more privately owned rhinos in southern Africathen state owned rhinos.
(37:26):
Yeah, absolutely. That's it.
Like the rhino situation.
It's a material for another another entire podcast again. Yes.
But of course it will come to the point.
I hope not, but it may come to the point where where rhino hornsget so valuable that it's worth the risk to go into the to.
They already worth more than gold, I guess.
(37:47):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But still,
it's easier to pick up the gold in the Kruger Park or the Social UnionFellowship Park than it is in a heavily guarded private area.
Yeah, I got to ask you your, your view on, on the followingand this is a question that it's not, I guess not widely.
Asked you mentioned earlier in the situation in Romaniathat you expect that 80% it will be,
(38:15):
tourist hunters earlier, like we were talking about the Africaand obviously in Africa, a majority of hunting are about
if not, you know, like almost all of the hunting are tourist hunters.
I always think about local hunters like,
you know, you know what I mean?
Like, theythey are people who would like to hunt those animals who are locals.
(38:39):
And then those tourist hunters with all the good thingsthat are happening, money to the economy and, you know,
control of poaching and jobs in that area. I'm not,you know, questioning that.
But I always feel like there, is a group of local hunters being inRomania, in Africa who would go like, damn, I would love to go hunting.
(39:00):
But then the prices of the resource are.
So it's a little bit like with housing, right? It's,it's a nice tourist area.
And that and the rich people from the city buying houses and the locals,they just
they just have to move out because they, they don't have a place to it.
So I think there is an element or maybe that's a question.
(39:23):
Do you see the element like this going on in hunting,that there is a local local guy who would love to go hunting, but,
it's like absolutely not doable financially for it. Yes,I definitely see that.
But not so much in, in Eastern Europe.
Because what in Romania, the way they're organizedis that basically the entire country is a hunting area from old times,
(39:46):
and it's divided in a lot of smaller areaswho each has a group of hunters, local hunters managing it.
So what they do is that most of the hunting,especially for meat, so, so females and calves and, and
young males and stuff like thatare always hunted by the local hunters, mainly.
(40:09):
And then they have these few trophy animalsthat are worth a lot of money for, for, for hunters.
And they sell them to sort of make things, make ends meet.
So, so I, I, I'm really not under the impressionin, in the Eastern European countries that you have a lot of frustrated
local hunters who are envious of, of the rich foreigners coming inand paying a lot for, for the, for the trophies.
(40:36):
They do get a lot of down there to, to shoot a couple of trophies, but
but obviously it's they cannot go in Romania and shoot a huge stag,every one of them every year.
So it's sort of a,
every ten years or something like that.
But most of the hunting taking place in EasternEurope is actually carried out by local hunters in Africa.
(40:59):
The situation is obviously way different in South Africa.
The, the big the vast majority of, of of hunters hunting in South Africaare actually South Africa, but they are hunting for meat.
They call them biltong hunters named after their dried meat down there.
(41:19):
So what what they sell to the foreigners is, is the akin to trophyanimals, which brings in a lot of money and all the,
all the, surplus animal regulation and management.
You could say, all the surplus females and young males and calvesand what have you, basically shot by local hunters.
(41:41):
But then you have, all different issue.
And that's with the, with the poor, local segments in Africa,because you have a lot of black people down there who,
who would love to have some, some meat in their pot.
And, and those are the people who basically goes, we say poaching goes
(42:01):
and hunted, due to local animals for meat, subsistence poaching,you could call it.
And and that's a huge problem for the entire hunting community.
Not so much that that it happensbecause in my point of view, it's inevitable.
I mean, you have people who wants to feed their families,but the problem is
(42:23):
how to deal with it in a mannerthat makes it sustainable for the future.
Because obviously it's possible.
What we do know we cannot do, and we know this from our own experienceand from experience all over the world, is
just to give it, give it freebecause, free, free for all always leads to the tragedy of the commons.
(42:45):
You always get a completely depleted landscape,
and you can see that all over Africawhen you move outside the, hunting areas, there's hardly any game left.
And and that's again, because it's been unregulated.
But I know of a few outfits down there who's really working on managingthe the wildlife in a manner that's more fair to the local population.
(43:12):
And again, to be honest, I don't I don't think it's it matters much,
at least not to the people I've met down there who tells the animalswhat what really matters.
Yeah, it's it might be like they know.
It may be that they're not interested at all.
I'm just, you know, like, just thinking I don't I don't think they,they, they, they are much into the hunting experience.
(43:36):
Actually, at least that's not been my experience.
But but they, they do need to protein. They do need to meet,
and more and more, outfitters in Africa,
as I see it, are looking actively into distributing,
larger and larger shares of the meatthat they harvest in the local area.
(43:59):
Also, as, as as a way to discourage poaching. Yes.
You mentioned the T word trophy,so I gotta, I gotta, I gotta ask you about that.
You shared the quote from Aldo Leopold not long ago about this universal
need of humans to preserve a trophy, a sort of a trophy,
(44:22):
which was which is funny because it was from the South County Almanac,which I probably read three times in the last two years.
But I recognize the, the, quotes, but I never connected that withan actual, you know, like a big heated discussion about trophy hunting.
So what do you think drivesthis universal human need of preserving some sort of a trophy?
(44:48):
I couldn't say that. I know,
I think it's I think it's
a very, very old drive in, in, in Denmark,we have found hunting trophies in excavations of, of, of old,
Stone age houses that are more than four, 5000 years old to me.
(45:09):
And I wouldn't I don't really see myself as, as a trophy hunter, per se,
but I do occasionally keep a physical trophy or a pictureor or sometimes even a rock I picked up at the place or whatever.
To me, it it's it's simply just a memento.
(45:31):
And I
because I go hunting for for the experience of it.
I've also visited places just to experience those places. And,
typically I would bring back mementos from that as well.
And then again, you have the trophy hunters who were really into thethe size of the trophies and, and measurements and records
(45:53):
and stuff like that, or just box ticking. Right?
Just like,yeah, you need to have all this French stamp collecting, as I call it.
But but the unlike so many others,I don't really see that as, as, as a best thing
because in, in my point of view,a trophy is basically a non-edible part of a of a very dead animal.
(46:15):
So, so that at that point there's nothing we can do differently.
The animal is gone.
It's dead.
So so the choice is, is is itokay that somebody keeps the inedible horns or is it not okay?
And I, I really, really cannot see a problem in deathbecause to to the hunter who keeps that memento,
(46:35):
it's, it's just to remind him of happy memories.
It brings a smile on his face.
What's negative about that? I simply cannot see it.
I do realize that that it.
Yeah, literally pisses people offbecause it symbolizes that we like hunting.
And I think the anti hunting movement, what they hatethe most is the fact that we actually like it.
(47:01):
And typically,you know, they jump to the conclusion that we like killing.
But that's not entirely true because hunting is not all about killing.
We liked the experience of huntingand we accept killing because that's that's a part of the whole process.
But but I've never met a hunter who didn't enjoy a good hunt,even when it ended in nothing.
(47:25):
So, so it's a it's a really complex matter.
And and to get back to the trophies, to me,it's just it's just a reminder, a memory and souvenir, a memento.
I agree, and I agree with that.
With that, you know, like, is itwould it be any better if I throw that horns or those antlers away?
(47:47):
No, it wouldn't make a difference. But here is the question.
We hear those those.
Well, I don't want to say use the word narratives,but we hear a lot at the we are we are in for experience.
We are in it for our experience to see the new placesto, you know, witness the culture
and even be, you know, being happy out in thein the environment, in nature.
(48:09):
And I totally even if I go hunting on the farm here in Ireland,I drive, you know, half an hour and I'm just left calm.
It's enjoyable for the experience.
Now the argument goes along the lines of like,if it's all about the experience,
as you say, why so much resistance to ban on trophy imports?
(48:33):
It shouldn't matter because those people though huntersthere are there for experience, so they will go anyway.
Leave their money, do their control of the problem.
Animals bring the local economy and whatever have their experience,which is first and foremost thing.
And they just not gonna bring the horns in. What's the big deal?
(48:56):
I don't think that's true because personally, I would go in any case,
I, I've been hunting so many places in the worldand only been bringing back photographs.
Are those trophies that we should ban? That's another discussion.
But but I've done that for years and years.
I have so many trophies hanging in a hunting lodges around the worldbecause I didn't want to bring them back.
(49:20):
I don't want it.I didn't want to ask. And then I know, yes. And it's super expensive.
And it was it was not aboutthe trophy for me was more about, in many cases, the story.
I was there to to write all the yeah,I took some great pictures that I can remember the hunt, but
but I know a lot of hunters for whomthe the trophy is a part of the experience.
(49:44):
They really cherry stole hunting trophies andand again, as I said before,
it's, it's a very dead, an inedible part of an animalthat has already been killed.
So to ban hunting trophies would have the consequencethat these hunters would find the experience
(50:06):
less.
They wouldn't want to pay as much.
Some people like to have some some kind of physical, physical thingin their hands when they put down a lot of money.
And and even though I don't feel so, I'mpretty sure that a lot of others do.
And I'm sure that it would lead to fewer huntersgoing to put money down in these,
(50:29):
on, on these destinations, which would which would be a very bad thingbecause they depend on they depend on that cash to do what they do.
Other than that, I think, I think the, the entire idea of banningsomething that is basically a very, very personal thing
is, is just stupid is it would be like banning say,okay, you can go to Nepal, but you can't bring back any pictures.
(50:57):
We should ban that.
I mean, why these trophies for the hunt for meansthe same as these pictures for the guy who's been trekking in Nepal,
why should anybody else have the right to interfere with that?
Because it has makes no difference to anybody.
I mean, we can discuss whether or not
we should be hunting for these animals,whether or not it's beneficial for for conservation and what have you.
(51:23):
But, I mean, I don't see one single reasonable argumentthat banning the import of hunting trophies helps anything.
It's just interfering with other people's lifestyle choices.
Basically, this is what you said earlier, that people perceivethis like, oh, you like all you like clearly got animals.
(51:45):
You're compensating for your this and that, right?We heard all those all those, all those arguments.
You must have a very small penis.Yeah, yeah, exactly. The penis argument.
And then effectively there's is like a top of likewe're going to stick it to those people
without actually like, what is like you're trying to achievebecause you're actually doing something,
(52:08):
you know, precisely the opposite to what you were saying,that you want to conserve the animals.
Are you doing that for animals?
Look, it's it's
it's I don't know what the are like,how that conversation should go any, any further.
Because I think that in the discussion on the trophyhunting and hunting, we reached sort of like a
(52:29):
I feel like a dead end, like everything was already saidmany times over. Yeah.
Yeah, many, many times over.
And and this is like over and over, like,is it the penis argument that this is, that is and and something else.
And you know, I, I think I'd only mentioned one name here, Cecil.
I said it's that, that, you know,I think that that messed up the whole discussion so badly for sure.
(52:54):
If I had a time machine, I would go back in timeand kill that goddamn lion before the dentist did.
So it that thing never happened. Yes, yes. Good idea.
That's proper use of a time machine.
No, but. But you're absolutely true. And it's,
it's it's in many way a discussion that's very, very stuckbecause, as you say, we've seen it all before, many, many times.
(53:21):
I actually saw a post on social mediaa couple of times called Anti Hunting Bingo, where they where they took,
you know, 25 of those documents and just put them upand they could just make their choice.
And it's, it's unfortunately it's very truethat and I believe our own arguments are the same as well.
(53:43):
I mean there's just nothing new on any sides.
So, so in order to move anywhere, at least one of the sides would haveto try to think of a different strategy and maybe start, you know,
engaging a little bit more in dialog
and approaching the, the other side to, to get anywherebecause it's, it is very, very stuck on, on, on.
(54:05):
I, you know, I am a big proponent of,
I don't know how to implement that, but on one of the conferences,I heard that the the anti hunting argument is very emotional.
And this is why it's getting so much traction.
And as the hunters, we are kind of on the losing positionbecause we are not using the emotional arguments.
(54:27):
We are very matter of fact evidence, numbers, statsand that just don't cut it.
And compared to like emotions like, oh, look at those beautifulanimals, majestic and whatever killed by those bloodthirsty psychos.
(54:48):
And, and I and I get that argument that we should,
talk about emotions, but I just don't know how.
Is it possible?
No, I haven't cracked the code either, because. Because, you know,
I hunt because I like to hunt.
I sit down a couple of times now, but but I, I, I went intowhen I do, you know, explaining hunting and and and and and all that
(55:15):
because I know and I, I, I applaud you for that because, the other thingthat I, what I'm trying to say is that I,
I do this because I genuinely feel that hunting, regulatedhunting is a part of the solution.
I, I feel that if, if,if we lose that management tool, biodiversity will suffer.
(55:40):
And I don't want to see that, but but,but how to to, you know, to to put that into some emotional defense
is, is is not very easy because as you said,all the arguments are more or less of a, of a technical nature.
And that's just how it is.
But but again, I have the feeling that this technical approachis, is very much necessary because
(56:07):
we don't have a second chance.
I mean, if if we blow it this time around, every time we lose a species,every time we lose a piece of habitat,
it is more or less lost forever.
And so I don't I don't I don't really see no reason for, for, you know,
trying to experiment with, with, with thingsbecause the situation is much too grave for that.
(56:31):
And I also think that we are gradually, slowlymoving in the right direction.
More and more people actually gets this,but it it takes a long time because we don't have that,
fantastic shock effect that, that they have when they post a pictureof a fat American guy kissing his wife in front of a deadline.
(56:53):
And I was going to say that, you know,I applaud you for saying, yeah, I, I can't because I like
because that's the other thing that I kind of don't likewhen the hunters are making an argument of like,
oh, I'm, you know, I'm controlling the predators,or I'm doing this, or I'm doing that for biodiversity,
or I'm doing that for farmers who are suffering crops like, and,you know, like this saying, like,
(57:17):
if you're if you're so worried about that farmer,you know, that farmer would give you a shovel and they get you this.
So, so I think we need to be honest and say like, yeah,we we doing that because we like it, but because we are
part of a system that supports biodiversity,that supports habitat conservation.
That's why that is beneficial.
(57:40):
Yes, yes.
And I usually say to people like thisthat I and other recreational hunters, obviously,
as the name implies, as the term implies, we huntbecause we think it's it's a good experience.
But the reason that the Swedish authorities lets us hunt the bears
is not that they think that we should have a good experience, it'sbecause we become their management tool.
(58:06):
So this is just so you know, there's there's very different motivationsdepending on where in the system you are.
Obviously the, the Swedish authorities wants the bears to be hunted,to keep down the human wildlife conflict and to,
to to maintain the bear population at, at some stable levelthat they have decided and, and what have you,
(58:27):
they don't care that that we are having a good time or not,and they are not in it for the money.
So there's different motivations all over the place.
But obviously the reason that we do it voluntarilyand absolutely for free is that we really, really like to do it.
And as as you, I sometimes hear hunters say, well,we do this to, to protect nature in Africa.
(58:51):
That's that's entirely bullshit. It's nice to know.
It's nice to know that a consequence of the money we put down in Africais that people protect nature, but we're not doing the protection.
We are shooting the animals because we like that experience.
And it's a part of the whole system, and it's absolutely necessary.
(59:11):
And we allow to feel good about contract rushing to that.
But it's not why we go to Africa.
I mean, and exactly there, that dishonestywhen people fail to admit that is a very soft spot that we have
and makes us a very easy target for for the argument,why don't you just send Africa check?
(59:34):
I don't send Africa check because for the very same reasonsthat everybody else don't, I would like to go hunting.
I would like to pay for it,but I'm not sending checks all over the place.
Nobody's doing that. Not even the anti hunters. Exactly.
I remember,I remember you posted a video, with a, with a dead elephant where
(59:54):
there was like an action of, like, hey, could you,you can buy this elephant, like, please.
You are like bunch of prominentanti hunting people, millionaires, mostly millionaires.
Hey, buy that elephant.
And then. And then you were just standing next to dead.
(01:00:14):
And if I was like, hey, no, it's because we offeredthis herd of elephants for free to all these, anti hunting millionaires
because of the fact on the ground in southern Africa is that inmany places there's too many elephants and there is no takers.
Nobody wants elephants,not even for free, because there's no more habitat left for them.
(01:00:36):
And that and in spite of that, we always have.
What if somebody goes in and says publicly,
we have to we have to take out some of the elephants in this areabecause they're destroying the habitat.
You have this massive shitstorm, but no alternatives.
So what we did in that case was that we, in cooperationwith a landowner in South Africa, offered a herd
(01:00:57):
of 15 elephants for free to anybody who would take itand show us how to manage elephants without hunting.
And then everybody went completely silent
because, I mean, it's free.
So Ricky Travis and all those guys who who are very loud,loudly against hunting, we contacted them directly.
(01:01:19):
They were contacted by by fans defense and sent the offerto their managers and to movie companies they cooperated with.
And, you know, it was it was shared by the tens of thousands.
And all we heard was sound of crickets, complete silence.
And then the video we refer to was when the landowner eventuallyhad to shoot those elephants.
(01:01:44):
And even then, because usually ifif I were to make a video where I stand in front of a dead actually
female elephant, it was an elephant cow,
there would be a massive shitstorm, but in this case, silence.
Yeah.
That's,sometimes silence speaks louder than words, as they say, yes, yes, yes.
(01:02:05):
And that that said, that hole put your moneywhere your mouth is. Argument is, is very difficult to get around.
Folks, listen, before we wrap this up,just a reminder. Subscribe to my newsletter.
The link is in the description of the show.
And yes, what if you look at your crystal ball into your crystal ball?
How do you see the future of hunting playing out?
(01:02:28):
There are a lot of people who are very,
you know, concerned or even just gave up and say like,yeah, hunting will be gone in the next however many years.
I even recently spoke with fly anglers and one of them were convincedthat within 20 years there will be no fly angling anymore.
(01:02:52):
Some people say that hunting always going to be around.
Maybe it's just not going to be recreational hunting.
What are your views like? If you look at your crystal ballin, you know, ten, 30, 50 years, what do you see?
Well, I'm more optimistic than I used to be just 3 or 5 years ago,because what we see,
(01:03:12):
especially here in Scandinavia,where we have regular polls among non hunters, is that,
the acceptance of hunting is growing
and we already has a majority of the non hunting populationin favor of the kinds of hunting we do here in Scandinavia.
And what we have seen movethat public opinion is information information information.
(01:03:38):
We've been doing this for a lot of us for maybe ten years,and we can really see the numbers move in favor of hunting.
Most non hunters are,
fairly intelligent people.
And they do understand these fairly simple arguments that we have.
Our problem has been that we haven't been heard.
(01:03:59):
And it's also been that we have actually hunters have been hiding,hiding a bit for many, many years.
And that's over. And and we can see a positive effect of that.
Obviously the situation is less, bright in countries like the UK wherewhere you have a big, big opposition to any kind of hunting.
(01:04:21):
But even there we are moving in the right direction.
What, what I see, you know,we have these proposed, hunting trophy import patents and I think they,
they are moving to the fourth try or something like thatin as many years.
And every time they try,it gets more and more difficult for them to go through with it,
(01:04:43):
because we have moreand more factual scientific arguments on the table and more and more,
parliamentarians actually daring to say, well,
the science is telling us that we might hurt wildlifewith this, with this, with this ban.
So let's step back and think about it.
(01:05:03):
So I think we are slowly moving in the right directionand and I'm very optimistic.
I think hunting will will stay for, for at least our time.
And I definitely agree that in, in, in countrieswhere we have large wildlife,
hunting will definitely never go away because we do need it as a tool.
(01:05:25):
Take take wild boar.
It's impossible to live coexist with wild boars without huntingbecause the the, the population explodes, explodes within a few years.
If you do not keep it at a certain level.
And if you don't, it's not only, is not only impossible to, to, to havecrops in the field, it also gets very difficult to maintain gardens.
(01:05:49):
And you know,
cemeteries and stuff like that.
They do make a lot of damage.
So we will always have some kind of hunting.
But I'm very optimistic that we will also also have,recreational hunting in the future.
Fantastic.
So, yes, just to really drop this off, any advice for hunters
(01:06:10):
how to talk about hunting, how to communicate about what they do
with knowing the hunters with with people who don't understand,maybe even with the with the armed, the hunters.
One is, as we talked about just before, be honest.
Be honest about it. We have nothing to hide.
Another thing is p factual.
(01:06:31):
Know your facts. I mean, if you don't know C,then say you don't know. Just don't make things up.
And certainly we could be a lot betterat respecting other people's feelings.
We gain nothing by showing non huntersa close up photo of of a head shot baboon.
I mean images that are,
(01:06:54):
scaring people does nothing good for hunting.
And to be honest, every single shitstorm that we had on social mediafor the last many, many years always started with a bad trophy photo.
And I'm not saying that we should ban trophy photos or anything,but I'm saying that we are allowed to just think a little bit
(01:07:14):
about what we throw into people's faces,and we gain nothing by by provoking them.
It's not.
It's not that we, supposed to be dishonest about it,but but why deliberately provoke people?
So those those are my three advices on onhow to communicate this for the future.
And that way this there were words of wisdom.
(01:07:37):
Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.
This is episode 193, and you're listening to the Conservationand Science podcast,
where we take a deep dive into topics of ecology, conservationaction, and human wildlife interactions.
And I'm your host, Tommy Serafin. Ski.
And I'm losing my voice.
As you can hear, I'm still recovering from some bad throat infection.
(00:22):
So I'm not going to drag this introduction for too longbecause I simply can't.
This is the first episode in 2025,and we are coming back to the topic of hunting.
You might say, although hunting is not the primary subject. It'ssort of in the background.
And we are talking about two other, topics as a primary topics.
(00:47):
First is human wildlife conflict.
And we going to use example of situationswith bears in conflict with brown bears in Romania.
And then later on we are going to talk about trophy hunting.
And we haven't spoke about trophy huntingfor quite a while on the podcast.
And I remember at some point I said, like,I'm not talking about trophy hunting on the podcast anymore
(01:13):
because everything was already said and is just like, you know, boring,which is over and over the same thing.
But I figure enough time has passed that it would be usefulto revisit the topic of trophy hunting from the perspective
of human wildlife conflict and habitat protection,especially with our guest today.
(01:34):
Our guest today is Jens Ulrik Hu and he is a hunting journalist.
He is a founder and editor of many hunting magazines.
He was also doing some communication workfor massive hunting organizations like CIC or Nordic Safari Club.
But obviously in this episode and as in most of my episodes, our guests,are speaking for themselves, expressing their personal opinions.
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And that's no different this time around.
So, folks, if human wildlife conflict and habitat conservationare your things and you're curious to learn about hunting
and what role it plays in those things,then this episode is definitely for you.
So enjoy the show.
yes. Welcome to the show.
(02:22):
Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to have you. And I'm delightedyou accepted the invitation.
Oh, I enjoy being here.
Excellent.
Listen, before we jump into all the interesting topics of,conservation, hunting, human wildlife conflict and the likes,
could you give our listeners a short version of who you are,what you do, and and, what was the history that brought you,
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that you do what you do?
Of course. Very briefly.
I started out as a hunter here in Scandinavia, where I live.
I'm the first hunter in my family, so I started from scratch.
I became very interested,
and engaged in hunting.
And, from there, I went into freelance writing.
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At first for hunting magazines.
And gradually I started to explain hunting to non hunters in mainstreammedia, at first in our local languages
and for the last couple of years, I've been doing it as a job, for,hunting organization we have here in Scandinavia trying to,
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engaging the debate about hunting and explainwhat's up and down in, in some of these
very complex questions,especially to the non hunters of this world. Yes.
And this is very, very important to have this conversation.
Like you said, we've known the huntersif we well want to preserve hunting, for the future.
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Listen. Yes,you have vast experience and your experience spans multiple continents.
Africa, India, in Europe, in Romania,you've been in a human wildlife conflict zones.
And I want to start with the human wildlife conflict.
Did you notice any common similarity, any similarities
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in those conflict zones,anything that is, you know, universal across the continents?
Very much, very much so.
One similarity, especially when we have human wildlife conflicts that,
endangers people,
endangers their livestock and endangers their livelihoodsall over the place.
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You have a quite a, huge level of fear ingrained
in those people living close to these animals and sometimes,
the outside world doesn't really recognize that fear.
So. So I'll give you a good example.
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In in Sweden, where I come from,
we have wolves and and the, the rational, you know, the rationalangle on wolves is that they are not really, dangerous to people.
They, they kill a lot of sheep.
And we all know the stories in special circumstances,in a very rare circumstances, they can be dangerous to people.
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But people living in the Swedish countryside,where there is a lot of wolves, are typically not very comfortable.
They are afraid. And,
from, from my point of
view, this this is, this is this is the biggest problemwe have here in Europe and Scandinavia.
Is that concern and level of fear that actually drivespeople to want to get rid of these animals.
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And it doesn't help. On the contrary,actually to to try and convince these people.
And it especially doesn't help to tell themthat they are irrational or stupid or or, overly sensitive or whatever
we say from, from our point of view. And,but it's actually the same all over the world.
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I was just in Romaniaa couple of months ago, visiting this actually tiny area
in Pennsylvania where they have most of the Romanian brown bears.
And these people in the countryside, they are living in constantfear to a degree where they change their daily habits.
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They used to be ableto, you know, walk into the forest and collect mushrooms or
let the let the kids, go and play hide and seek and whateverand all that is, is gone.
And they're always thinking, oh, what if I meet a bear?
Where can I go? How how do I ensure my safety?
And and they all know, if not directly, somebody, then they all know ofsomebody who's been either mauled by a bear or even killed by a bear.
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And obviously, that level of fear gets to a point where where peopleand that's also a common, thing all over the world
where you have these wildlife conflicts at some point, peoplestart taking matters into their own hands and then things, you know,
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running
out of control, in, in Romania,they actually poured honey on the railway tracks.
Oh my word.
So, you know,the person on the train would come and, you know, finish the job.
So the the, they put,
antifreeze glycol in, in meat and put it out for the bears.
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And obviously that will kill a bear, but obviouslyit will also kill a dog or a fox or wolf or whatever comes.
So really, really horrible cases of of
poaching,
committed by ordinary people who are basically just afraid.
What role does it play?
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The, you know, traditional ways of dealing with those animalsbecause in the conversation they have on their podcast,
it is often quite repeat repeated theme is that people who rememberand live with those dangerous animals for generations,
they well, sort of have to learn to live alongside themand manage them and themselves.
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While the conflict is especially severe in the situationswhere that traditional knowledge is gone for whatever reasons,
whether for the reason that animals were not thereand then they come back, or perhaps people lifestyles changed
and then generation to generation,they forgot how to live alongside those animals.
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How big of a issue that is? I think it's a it's a big issue.
And the bears is a is a really good example because as I said earlier,I have a lot of experience from Sweden.
I live in Sweden and in Swedenwe have quite a big, very population since decades back.
But we really don't have any problems.
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We don't have any human wildlife conflicts of.
Yeah, of of that matters in Sweden.
It's so rare that anything happens.
Whereas in Romania they had the same situation until 2016with an even larger and more concentrated bear population.
And then under pressure from animal rights groups,they more or less overnight banned bear hunting.
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Wow. And two things happened in Romania.
One thing is, obviously the bear population started to grow rapidly,
because they had been able to keep it at high population,but sort of level the stable population.
But it started to grow. The bears start to spread,
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obviously, because there was not enough room for themin their traditional habitat, and that brought them closer to people.
And since nobody was hunting them surprisingly fast,the bears got habituated.
They they lost their fear of humans.
And then you had,
and more or less exponential, development in, in conflictsand especially because of the conflicts in Romania.
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Many.
So you have everything from crop damage, a couple of bearscan really ruin, field of corn or field of goat or whatever.
They, they grow the out there, you have livestock killings.
The big bears kills the the cows.
You have Break-Ins into stables, companies, houses,the bears, just looking for food.
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They told us in one place, in one particular village down there,they had to disable the automatic doors in the supermarkets
because the bears found out. Wow. We just walk up to the doorand there's the fruit.
So, so, so a lot of practical problemand of course, in Romania, the worst thing was that because bears
completely lost their fear of people,they started begging for food along the, tourist routes.
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And very soon they started to attack peoplethat initially just looking for food in, you know, pockets and whatever.
But since they have fingernails like this, you get hurt,
and eventually you, you had bears that, that killed people.
And from 2016 and until now,
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300 people in a actually a very small areaof Romania has been mauled by bears, and 26 people has been killed.
So it's it's a huge problem.
And again, when I compare to Sweden, where we hunt to bears every year,we don't have any such problems.
Same species, fairly populated areas, but no problems with the bears.
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When the bear in Sweden smells person, it's out of there.
And it used to be like that in Romania as well.
So what happened now in Romaniais that the reinstated bear hunting from this year. But
in order to sort of reeducate the bearsto install the fear of man in these beasts, so to speak,
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I mean, that is going to take a long while because because every bearwho is right now
unafraid of people has to be taken out because theythey won't forget that we have sweets in our pockets.
And werethis was does, welcomed by the local community, the local community
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super happy about the opportunityto to to to start hunting the bears again.
The international community is condemning the,the initiative to reinstall bear hunting.
But the problem is that they haven't really,come up with any alternatives.
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And the big problem in my point of viewis that the Bears in Romania has been so habituated
by now that this is not a problemthat's going to be fixed with a couple of years of hunting,
I believe, and it's just a theory of mine,but I believe that it will take maybe 10 or 20 years on before the bears
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have that previous level of, of fear or respect of of, of people,how long they ban was ban on the ban was for eight years.
For eight years. So so so so it would probably take a long along this.
I think it will take longer. True toto get back to the previous situation because, because
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and obviously what they have to do now,which is also a concern, among hunting
organizations around the world who basically applaudsthat they are going to manage the bears with hunting again.
But it's a big concern that in order to get results in the near future,obviously they have to prioritize
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to kill the bears that are the most habituated.
First, we drove around there for 3 or 4 days and saw several bears,you know, right next to the road,
just waiting for people to come and throw some some breador some sweets at them.
And of course, those bears have to go firstbecause there's no way to to reeducate those bears.
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They have lost the fear of humans.
And the problem is a lot of those bears are females with cubs.
So those cubs are lost as well. It's it's
and just to boil everything down,
you know, back in 2016, I'm sure that these animal rights organizationsreally, really felt that they were doing something good for the bears.
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But I'm also sure that in order to get back to the situationwhere bears in Romanian peasants in this area can coexist,
it's going to be a bear bloodbath,because we have gone to the point where there is no other way.
And wasit was the conservation status of bears in any this sort of decline or.
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No, they were the problem.
No, it was not.
The problem was that they were not really sure about the numbers.
So what they had to do now, because now,now they are sure that they have way more bears than ever.
So what they have to do now in order to, to reinstatehunting is to also come up with some,
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some really good systems of, of of counting the bears,some scientifically sound systems that work
that are a lot better than, than what they inherited from, Ceausescu'sregime back in the days.
But, you know, doing the backwards calculation, it's it's pretty obviousthat that the bears were not threatened in 2016 by any means.
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There was there was a lot of bears,and now there is, a hell of a lot of bears. Pardon my French.
So. So what?
What they are doing now is that they have come up with systems to,to count the bears.
And again, it's going to rely heavily on, on huntersand what is new and what's make this makes this,
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this system
a lot more, more bulletproof than, than earlieris that they're going to base it mainly on DNA sampling every ten years.
They're going to, you know, in an orderly manner to collect bear shitand, and, and see how many individuals they come up with,
and then they will have some sort of algorithm.
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There are there are fantastic methods these dayswith, with this like and environmental DNA.
You can you can you can even find out what mammals are by picking upthe DNA from rivers and kind of like extrapolate that.
So it's, it's it's great.
And it's, it's all come, come, come to the,come to good use within the last ten years or so.
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So a lot have, has happened.So I'm not worried that that this, this new,
management by hunting will endanger the Paris in any way.
But I do worry that it will take longerthan people have hoped for to get back to a situation
where human bear conflicts, return to to close 2 to 0 incidents.
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Was that a a a matter that we seeand I'm sure you can give examples from other places
and that Romania that the decision makerswere disconnected from the area, the realities on the ground.
So very much so.
And that's another common feature of human like wildlife conflicts,because from from my point of view, it always goes bad when,
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when political, decisions are made because these guys are not biology,just state they are not the land use state.
They have no practical experience whatsoeverwith with whatever they're dealing with.
And it's typically at that point that things goes very, very bad.
And, and the problem is that that no matter how powerfula politician feels,
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it's very, very hard for them to admitthat they have absolutely no power over nature.
And they have to learn it the hard way every single time.
In Romania, one of one of the issues, on on top of the biological issueshere, is that this particular part of Transylvania
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is inhabited almost exclusively by a Hungarian minority in Romania.
So there's also a lot of, you know, political,
bad blood between them and the rest of the Romanians.
And that has had an effect on, on bear management,which is, again, I mean, why it has no, no biological reasons to, to,
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to do things differently there.But unfortunately, that has played a role as well.
But what they have said to us now is that they are backon, on a, on a strictly,
fact based tract,
track where they will, where they will try and managed to make the bears
just, you know, based on, on factsand monitoring of, of the bear population from here on.
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But of course they do.
I am 100%sure that when we see the first pictures of foreign hunters in Romania
having killed a bear, because this is this is all really happeningas we speak, then we have to shoot stones all over again
and, and so, so in order to get back to a situationwhere they, they have that sort of balance is the wrong way, but,
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sort of same status quo, the wrong word,but sort of same status quo as they had before the, the hunting ban.
They, they have to, to, to,
to stand their ground because there's going to be a lot of, of, of stormhitting those politicians all for, for, for sure.
And tell me what is the, what is the balance or what is the proportion,
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between local hunters.
And like you said, the tourist hunters who are coming back,I think, I think that in the future when, when the most problematic bear
individuals has been shot, then I think maybe 80% of the huntersor maybe more will be foreign hunters who will pay for the hunts.
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But until those problematic bears are taken out, it'sprobably going to be the other way around, because I don't think any
any traveling hunters from abroad would be interested in shootinga three year old bear who is was begging for for sweets at the roadside.
Gotcha, gotcha.
I thought you going to I got you thought you're going to saythat it's going to be too dangerous for them.
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But the the opposite. It's just like ait's like a teddy bear over there.
Like I'm saying, I'm not going to shoot them.
And it's, it's actually sad,but it's really those bears that they have to take out first
because they are by far the most dangerous ones,because this is I guess this is what people, people don't understand.
Right? And we saw those videos on YouTube like,oh my God, it's a bear. It's lovely.
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And then they forget that that is actual bear.
Like you said, with the with the big massive clawsand it will break your neck with one swift move.
They think they told us many stories as we were there,but one of one of the ones I remember best is that there was this
this elderly woman from a big city in Romaniawho went to the area to see the bears.
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And it's not difficult, and all because in the forestthere at the roadside and near to all the big tourist destinations,
they're just waiting for the cars to slow downand throw some food at them.
So, so what they've been trying to do is to tell the touristsnot to feed the bears, but obviously it doesn't work.
So you have this elderly woman, she leaves the carand she starts giving the bear sweets from her pocket.
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And this young bear, it's only 150 kilos or somethinglike that, is is eating the sweets.
And then she gets the brilliant idea to take a selfie,to turn her back at the bear and take a selfie for my Instagram profile.
And she does it.
The last picture she takes is with the bear hugging her from behind,just to look for some more sweets inside the that's an awesome,
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that's an awesome profile photo.
Yeah, I hope I don't
I don't know if she will heavily mobile though if she was actuallykilled, but I've met a few of those people who were heavily mauled.
And it's it's I mean, most of them wish that they were killed.
It's really not a nice face to be mauled by a bear.
I can I can tell a story about bear from from Poland.I think the listeners never heard that story.
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I actually, a couple of years ago went to Poland to see the bearsand the, the gamekeeper, the local gamekeeper was standing as a story.
There was two German huntersand they were crawling into it like a young,
I don't know what's the what's the proper term?
Like a young forest that was plantedand they were crawling underneath it, and there was a bear in there, and
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and obviously the bear mauled one of those hunters.
He ended up in a hospital, some, you know,massive amount of stitches, on him, you know, like, really great.
But he wasn't, you know, like, his life wasn't in danger,but he was badly mauled, and his body come to him,
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and he says the guy who has mauls is like, hey, I lost my, my heart, my,this was like a memorabilia.
My heart in this in this, in this wouldwould you go there and pick that one for me?
And this guy goes there to the place where he was mauled by the bear.
And a couple of hours later,he lands on the next bed in the hospital, mauled by the same bear.
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And the guy goes like, how stupid do you have to be your body?
Just be heavily mauled right?
He was lucky he survived.And now you go for this to the same place the same day.
The pig, his hat, his lucky hunting hat or something like, So,you know, like the people's stupidity knows no bounds, I guess.
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Exactly, exactly.
And in, in Romania right now,they have these warning size signs all over the place.
Don't go into the forest. There's bears, but people do. So anyway.
And the last incident that happened when when somebody was actuallykilled was right before I went there in late summer.
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And it was a 19 year old Romanian girl.
She was, victim number 26 who actually died from a bear attacksince since 2016.
And it's, of course, it's always super sad story when a life is lost.
But it's also a little bit strange that it took 26 victims,that the difference between her
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and the other 25was that she was from one of the biggest cities in Romania.
She was very good looking.
And there was do you don't you know, there was this whole Instagram,Facebook profile, on this pretty young girl
and that created a shitstorm in Romaniaso severe that they called in the parliament from their,
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summer vacationto to reinstate hunting because of the public overreaction.
Right. It's all very it'sit's like you could if you do this properly on the from day one.
Yes, exactly. So sorry.
So you may have had the 25, elderly personsbefore her to didn't provoke the same reaction.
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I mean, obviously,I think it's a very good idea that they go back to the proven solution
and says, okay, if we want to live with bears,we have to manage them by hunting them.
What do you say? Because I'm sure that that's,
Well, I don't know the
specifics of the situation in Romania,and I'm learning from you a lot right now, but I guess I'm guessing
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from the other situations that they were voices like, oh,we should manage them in the non-lethal way.
So were there any voices like that about non-lethal managementand is it doable?
Possible?
Yes, there is a lot of voices like that,and they've been trying to do that for the last eight years.
And as I said during that time,the incidence has been growing exponentially.
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So so they have been proven wrong. Unfortunately.
And I would I would take that a little bit furtherbecause I've looked into bear management all over the world.
I don't I don't know of a single place in the worldwhere non-lethal management, of of a big and growing bear
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population have shown any kind of success in, in, in preventing these,these set incidents of human wildlife conflict with bears.
Yeah.
But I guess if the issue is the sheer numbersrather than the behavior. Right.
That's both.
I mean, because when the numbers grow, the bearsare, sort of pressured into to, to human,
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human populated areas.
So, so, so there's more contactwhen bear bears, no bear number must grow.
And if they're not hunted, then obviously the habituation processjust goes.
It's a good point that the that the growing number is drivingthe habituation is driving their, their habits.
Yes. You mentioned
on the start of this conversation that they werethere was a lot of poaching, going on and obviously,
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as usual, in those cases,
if the bear gets poisoned by some antifreeze or something,that's definitely less humane death than from the bullet of the hunter.
Of course. Tell me, tell me, what is your take?
Maybe more general on the role of hunting to one contact counteract,you know, poaching, illegal killing, but also,
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I would like you to elaborate on the roleof hunting in preserving the population.
Right. Because people who are listening to thatand they're maybe not that versed in the hunting topics,
they might have a picture now that well, now they want to killall the bears, which again, is like a typical argument.
Yes. Right.
And and of course, that not that's not the casebecause the hunters we have
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at least in, in Europe and North Americatoday, basically more or less all over the world.
But, but hunters like, like me and everybody elsewho hunts in Europe, what we call recreational hunters.
And a lot of people dislike that idea, because what it basically meansis that we go hunting because we like to go hunting
is not that we will die from starvation tomorrow. What?
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That we cannot feed our kids,
or for that matter, that we make a ton of money on on sellingthe products is simply because we like that choice of lifestyle.
And it's it's so important to us that that obviously we want to be ableto hunt next year and in ten years, and we want to be able to,
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teach our children, our grandchildren to go hunting and,and to to give them the same opportunities or better opportunities for,
for going hunting than we have.
So we have a very strong interest in preserving,
the wildlife
and obviously, we know that, that even though we only huntfor comparatively few species, out of the thousands and thousands,
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thousands of species out there to preserve those species,we need to work to preserve entire ecosystems.
And to do that, we need to preserve habitat.
So it's sort of a closed circle.
It's in our very own interests to work for the preservation of nature,
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because if we don't,we cannot have strong populations of wildlife of game to hunt.
So, so this this is this is the driver all over the world where we arehunting is mentioned as, as an incentive for, for nature conservation
in, in many countries, especially the poorer countries of the world,people like me go on, on a hunting holiday basically,
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again, because we like to hunt and it's, it's nice
with the change of scenery and it's exciting to experiencehow they hunt in Africa or North America or wherever.
But if you take a country like Africa,the incentive there is not that the locals,
like to hunt as it is here in Europe.
For us, the incentive there is that somebody from the outside comesin, pays a lot of money for the experience.
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So suddenly the local Africans have the opportunity to choose,do we use this land for conventional agriculture?
Meaning cows and goats,or do we use it for natural habitat and and earn some money
on on the hunting, on selling the surplus animals for hunting.
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And then that's, that's basically based, boils down to, to a, yeah.
The calculation and in those countries where the preservation of naturalhabitat for hunting is a better deal, this is naturally where we end.
And going back to, to poaching, there's a few differentdefinitions of poaching, but I like to, you know, illegal hunting.
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The problem is that it is by definition unregulated.
So nobody knows what's going on.
And there's no facts to, to to build future management on.
And there's no way to say, okay, we think that in this area we can takeout three Buffalo Bulls because these, these guys, are poachers.
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They're criminals. They're thieves.
They will take whatever they canjust as a as a regular burglar here or car thief or whatever.
He will not stop because it's not sustainable.What he's doing is the same with poachers.
So that's why poaching illegal hunting is such a massive problem.
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There's no way to to regulate it.
There's no way to to to stop it, before it becomes unsustainable.
But a few things,
a few consequences of, of recreational hunting, in hunting, tourism,
that that has an effect on poaching is obviously you have people in thatlocal community now making their livelihood on arranging hunting.
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They get money from outsiders to come and hunt.
And of course, if those sites, outsiders cannot come and huntbecause poachers ruin the area, then the business is gone.
So there's a lot of of local incentive to prevent poaching in areaswhere they make money on illegal hunting.
Another thing that that actually prevents a lot of poachingwhen you have legal hunting going on, is that every hunter
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typically hunts with a guide and maybe a tracker or whatever.
So it's it's groups of 3 or 4
more people going through the bush with firearmsin a more or less random pattern looking for whatever they're hunting.
Every single one of those groups,
obviously poses a danger to a poacher,because they don't want to run into these people.
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So there's there's eyes on the area and there's, there's some, some gunsfloating around, and then nobody wants that conflict.
So a hunting area is a lot more riskyto enter for a poacher than a hairy area with no hunters.
Simply because of that practical factthat people are moving around all the time and keeping us.
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Unless there is, like, a such an organized poaching that
that's dangerous for hunters to move into areawhere there are organized gangs of, of poachers.
But that's I guess it's like an entire different story.Yeah, that's an entire different story.
Because again, poachers are not a not difficult,not very different from, from, say, burglars.
(34:36):
I mean, if a burglar has a choice between a house with a dog and a housewith no dog, he will pick the house with no dog, typically.
And it's just the same mechanism. You don't want to take too high risks.
And again, if a poacher knows that there's a high value animal for him,like a rhino, then he will stop at nothing.
(34:57):
Then you will fly in with a helicopter and, and, and shootat whatever comes in his way.
So, so it's it's not it's not a black and white solution, butbut there's a clear tendency
that hunting areas sees much less poaching than non hunting areas.
Because in the non hunting areasnobody has the financial incentive to to keep poaching guys.
(35:21):
I mean at a minimum.
And you don't have this constant patrollingand this constant surveillance.
Well so we know that in many, in many casesthose poachers are rather be game scouts for hunters
and use their knowledge of the area and animals in theyou know, not risking.
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Yeah.
Being against the law and usually also getting better moneyor at least legal money by using the same skills.
They still are they still in the bush because they like itand they know the animals, but they kind of like of course
have a different what what we see in southern Africais that if we take Rhino as an example,
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which is probably the most valuable animal for the poachers,most of the rhinos are shot on state owned ground.
So most of the rhinos are killed in the national parks,probably because,
as you mentioned, there is unfortunately a little,little bit of corruption going on to say the least.
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So you have park rangers, who knows where these animals are.
You even have a lot of cases where Vince has been involved in poachingand and again, on, on the, on the private land where you have
at the moment a lot more rhinos.
And then on the, in the national parks,the rhinos are much better guarded.
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So the poachers know that there's a biggerrisk of going into private land.
It happens, of course, but it's, it's it's just,
proportionally more dangerousto be a rhino in a national park in South Africa than on private land.
And that has actually shifted the, the entire ownership balance
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because the state owned rhinos has been,you know, depleted, rapidly over the last decades, whereas,
in many cases, the privately owned population has been growing slowly.
So, that there are more privately owned rhinos in southern Africathen state owned rhinos.
(37:26):
Yeah, absolutely. That's it.
Like the rhino situation.
It's a material for another another entire podcast again. Yes.
But of course it will come to the point.
I hope not, but it may come to the point where where rhino hornsget so valuable that it's worth the risk to go into the to.
They already worth more than gold, I guess.
(37:47):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But still,
it's easier to pick up the gold in the Kruger Park or the Social UnionFellowship Park than it is in a heavily guarded private area.
Yeah, I got to ask you your, your view on, on the followingand this is a question that it's not, I guess not widely.
Asked you mentioned earlier in the situation in Romaniathat you expect that 80% it will be,
(38:15):
tourist hunters earlier, like we were talking about the Africaand obviously in Africa, a majority of hunting are about
if not, you know, like almost all of the hunting are tourist hunters.
I always think about local hunters like,
you know, you know what I mean?
Like, theythey are people who would like to hunt those animals who are locals.
(38:39):
And then those tourist hunters with all the good thingsthat are happening, money to the economy and, you know,
control of poaching and jobs in that area. I'm not,you know, questioning that.
But I always feel like there, is a group of local hunters being inRomania, in Africa who would go like, damn, I would love to go hunting.
(39:00):
But then the prices of the resource are.
So it's a little bit like with housing, right? It's,it's a nice tourist area.
And that and the rich people from the city buying houses and the locals,they just
they just have to move out because they, they don't have a place to it.
So I think there is an element or maybe that's a question.
(39:23):
Do you see the element like this going on in hunting,that there is a local local guy who would love to go hunting, but,
it's like absolutely not doable financially for it. Yes,I definitely see that.
But not so much in, in Eastern Europe.
Because what in Romania, the way they're organizedis that basically the entire country is a hunting area from old times,
(39:46):
and it's divided in a lot of smaller areaswho each has a group of hunters, local hunters managing it.
So what they do is that most of the hunting,especially for meat, so, so females and calves and, and
young males and stuff like thatare always hunted by the local hunters, mainly.
(40:09):
And then they have these few trophy animalsthat are worth a lot of money for, for, for hunters.
And they sell them to sort of make things, make ends meet.
So, so I, I, I'm really not under the impressionin, in the Eastern European countries that you have a lot of frustrated
local hunters who are envious of, of the rich foreigners coming inand paying a lot for, for the, for the trophies.
(40:36):
They do get a lot of down there to, to shoot a couple of trophies, but
but obviously it's they cannot go in Romania and shoot a huge stag,every one of them every year.
So it's sort of a,
every ten years or something like that.
But most of the hunting taking place in EasternEurope is actually carried out by local hunters in Africa.
(40:59):
The situation is obviously way different in South Africa.
The, the big the vast majority of, of of hunters hunting in South Africaare actually South Africa, but they are hunting for meat.
They call them biltong hunters named after their dried meat down there.
(41:19):
So what what they sell to the foreigners is, is the akin to trophyanimals, which brings in a lot of money and all the,
all the, surplus animal regulation and management.
You could say, all the surplus females and young males and calvesand what have you, basically shot by local hunters.
(41:41):
But then you have, all different issue.
And that's with the, with the poor, local segments in Africa,because you have a lot of black people down there who,
who would love to have some, some meat in their pot.
And, and those are the people who basically goes, we say poaching goes
(42:01):
and hunted, due to local animals for meat, subsistence poaching,you could call it.
And and that's a huge problem for the entire hunting community.
Not so much that that it happensbecause in my point of view, it's inevitable.
I mean, you have people who wants to feed their families,but the problem is
(42:23):
how to deal with it in a mannerthat makes it sustainable for the future.
Because obviously it's possible.
What we do know we cannot do, and we know this from our own experienceand from experience all over the world, is
just to give it, give it freebecause, free, free for all always leads to the tragedy of the commons.
(42:45):
You always get a completely depleted landscape,
and you can see that all over Africawhen you move outside the, hunting areas, there's hardly any game left.
And and that's again, because it's been unregulated.
But I know of a few outfits down there who's really working on managingthe the wildlife in a manner that's more fair to the local population.
(43:12):
And again, to be honest, I don't I don't think it's it matters much,
at least not to the people I've met down there who tells the animalswhat what really matters.
Yeah, it's it might be like they know.
It may be that they're not interested at all.
I'm just, you know, like, just thinking I don't I don't think they,they, they, they are much into the hunting experience.
(43:36):
Actually, at least that's not been my experience.
But but they, they do need to protein. They do need to meet,
and more and more, outfitters in Africa,
as I see it, are looking actively into distributing,
larger and larger shares of the meatthat they harvest in the local area.
(43:59):
Also, as, as as a way to discourage poaching. Yes.
You mentioned the T word trophy,so I gotta, I gotta, I gotta ask you about that.
You shared the quote from Aldo Leopold not long ago about this universal
need of humans to preserve a trophy, a sort of a trophy,
(44:22):
which was which is funny because it was from the South County Almanac,which I probably read three times in the last two years.
But I recognize the, the, quotes, but I never connected that withan actual, you know, like a big heated discussion about trophy hunting.
So what do you think drivesthis universal human need of preserving some sort of a trophy?
(44:48):
I couldn't say that. I know,
I think it's I think it's
a very, very old drive in, in, in Denmark,we have found hunting trophies in excavations of, of, of old,
Stone age houses that are more than four, 5000 years old to me.
(45:09):
And I wouldn't I don't really see myself as, as a trophy hunter, per se,
but I do occasionally keep a physical trophy or a pictureor or sometimes even a rock I picked up at the place or whatever.
To me, it it's it's simply just a memento.
(45:31):
And I
because I go hunting for for the experience of it.
I've also visited places just to experience those places. And,
typically I would bring back mementos from that as well.
And then again, you have the trophy hunters who were really into thethe size of the trophies and, and measurements and records
(45:53):
and stuff like that, or just box ticking. Right?
Just like,yeah, you need to have all this French stamp collecting, as I call it.
But but the unlike so many others,I don't really see that as, as, as a best thing
because in, in my point of view,a trophy is basically a non-edible part of a of a very dead animal.
(46:15):
So, so that at that point there's nothing we can do differently.
The animal is gone.
It's dead.
So so the choice is, is is itokay that somebody keeps the inedible horns or is it not okay?
And I, I really, really cannot see a problem in deathbecause to to the hunter who keeps that memento,
(46:35):
it's, it's just to remind him of happy memories.
It brings a smile on his face.
What's negative about that? I simply cannot see it.
I do realize that that it.
Yeah, literally pisses people offbecause it symbolizes that we like hunting.
And I think the anti hunting movement, what they hatethe most is the fact that we actually like it.
(47:01):
And typically,you know, they jump to the conclusion that we like killing.
But that's not entirely true because hunting is not all about killing.
We liked the experience of huntingand we accept killing because that's that's a part of the whole process.
But but I've never met a hunter who didn't enjoy a good hunt,even when it ended in nothing.
(47:25):
So, so it's a it's a really complex matter.
And and to get back to the trophies, to me,it's just it's just a reminder, a memory and souvenir, a memento.
I agree, and I agree with that.
With that, you know, like, is itwould it be any better if I throw that horns or those antlers away?
(47:47):
No, it wouldn't make a difference. But here is the question.
We hear those those.
Well, I don't want to say use the word narratives,but we hear a lot at the we are we are in for experience.
We are in it for our experience to see the new placesto, you know, witness the culture
and even be, you know, being happy out in thein the environment, in nature.
(48:09):
And I totally even if I go hunting on the farm here in Ireland,I drive, you know, half an hour and I'm just left calm.
It's enjoyable for the experience.
Now the argument goes along the lines of like,if it's all about the experience,
as you say, why so much resistance to ban on trophy imports?
(48:33):
It shouldn't matter because those people though huntersthere are there for experience, so they will go anyway.
Leave their money, do their control of the problem.
Animals bring the local economy and whatever have their experience,which is first and foremost thing.
And they just not gonna bring the horns in. What's the big deal?
(48:56):
I don't think that's true because personally, I would go in any case,
I, I've been hunting so many places in the worldand only been bringing back photographs.
Are those trophies that we should ban? That's another discussion.
But but I've done that for years and years.
I have so many trophies hanging in a hunting lodges around the worldbecause I didn't want to bring them back.
(49:20):
I don't want it.I didn't want to ask. And then I know, yes. And it's super expensive.
And it was it was not aboutthe trophy for me was more about, in many cases, the story.
I was there to to write all the yeah,I took some great pictures that I can remember the hunt, but
but I know a lot of hunters for whomthe the trophy is a part of the experience.
(49:44):
They really cherry stole hunting trophies andand again, as I said before,
it's, it's a very dead, an inedible part of an animalthat has already been killed.
So to ban hunting trophies would have the consequencethat these hunters would find the experience
(50:06):
less.
They wouldn't want to pay as much.
Some people like to have some some kind of physical, physical thingin their hands when they put down a lot of money.
And and even though I don't feel so, I'mpretty sure that a lot of others do.
And I'm sure that it would lead to fewer huntersgoing to put money down in these,
(50:29):
on, on these destinations, which would which would be a very bad thingbecause they depend on they depend on that cash to do what they do.
Other than that, I think, I think the, the entire idea of banningsomething that is basically a very, very personal thing
is, is just stupid is it would be like banning say,okay, you can go to Nepal, but you can't bring back any pictures.
(50:57):
We should ban that.
I mean, why these trophies for the hunt for meansthe same as these pictures for the guy who's been trekking in Nepal,
why should anybody else have the right to interfere with that?
Because it has makes no difference to anybody.
I mean, we can discuss whether or not
we should be hunting for these animals,whether or not it's beneficial for for conservation and what have you.
(51:23):
But, I mean, I don't see one single reasonable argumentthat banning the import of hunting trophies helps anything.
It's just interfering with other people's lifestyle choices.
Basically, this is what you said earlier, that people perceivethis like, oh, you like all you like clearly got animals.
(51:45):
You're compensating for your this and that, right?We heard all those all those, all those arguments.
You must have a very small penis.Yeah, yeah, exactly. The penis argument.
And then effectively there's is like a top of likewe're going to stick it to those people
without actually like, what is like you're trying to achievebecause you're actually doing something,
(52:08):
you know, precisely the opposite to what you were saying,that you want to conserve the animals.
Are you doing that for animals?
Look, it's it's
it's I don't know what the are like,how that conversation should go any, any further.
Because I think that in the discussion on the trophyhunting and hunting, we reached sort of like a
(52:29):
I feel like a dead end, like everything was already saidmany times over. Yeah.
Yeah, many, many times over.
And and this is like over and over, like,is it the penis argument that this is, that is and and something else.
And you know, I, I think I'd only mentioned one name here, Cecil.
I said it's that, that, you know,I think that that messed up the whole discussion so badly for sure.
(52:54):
If I had a time machine, I would go back in timeand kill that goddamn lion before the dentist did.
So it that thing never happened. Yes, yes. Good idea.
That's proper use of a time machine.
No, but. But you're absolutely true. And it's,
it's it's in many way a discussion that's very, very stuckbecause, as you say, we've seen it all before, many, many times.
(53:21):
I actually saw a post on social mediaa couple of times called Anti Hunting Bingo, where they where they took,
you know, 25 of those documents and just put them upand they could just make their choice.
And it's, it's unfortunately it's very truethat and I believe our own arguments are the same as well.
(53:43):
I mean there's just nothing new on any sides.
So, so in order to move anywhere, at least one of the sides would haveto try to think of a different strategy and maybe start, you know,
engaging a little bit more in dialog
and approaching the, the other side to, to get anywherebecause it's, it is very, very stuck on, on, on.
(54:05):
I, you know, I am a big proponent of,
I don't know how to implement that, but on one of the conferences,I heard that the the anti hunting argument is very emotional.
And this is why it's getting so much traction.
And as the hunters, we are kind of on the losing positionbecause we are not using the emotional arguments.
(54:27):
We are very matter of fact evidence, numbers, statsand that just don't cut it.
And compared to like emotions like, oh, look at those beautifulanimals, majestic and whatever killed by those bloodthirsty psychos.
(54:48):
And, and I and I get that argument that we should,
talk about emotions, but I just don't know how.
Is it possible?
No, I haven't cracked the code either, because. Because, you know,
I hunt because I like to hunt.
I sit down a couple of times now, but but I, I, I went intowhen I do, you know, explaining hunting and and and and and all that
(55:15):
because I know and I, I, I applaud you for that because, the other thingthat I, what I'm trying to say is that I,
I do this because I genuinely feel that hunting, regulatedhunting is a part of the solution.
I, I feel that if, if,if we lose that management tool, biodiversity will suffer.
(55:40):
And I don't want to see that, but but,but how to to, you know, to to put that into some emotional defense
is, is is not very easy because as you said,all the arguments are more or less of a, of a technical nature.
And that's just how it is.
But but again, I have the feeling that this technical approachis, is very much necessary because
(56:07):
we don't have a second chance.
I mean, if if we blow it this time around, every time we lose a species,every time we lose a piece of habitat,
it is more or less lost forever.
And so I don't I don't I don't really see no reason for, for, you know,
trying to experiment with, with, with thingsbecause the situation is much too grave for that.
(56:31):
And I also think that we are gradually, slowlymoving in the right direction.
More and more people actually gets this,but it it takes a long time because we don't have that,
fantastic shock effect that, that they have when they post a pictureof a fat American guy kissing his wife in front of a deadline.
(56:53):
And I was going to say that, you know,I applaud you for saying, yeah, I, I can't because I like
because that's the other thing that I kind of don't likewhen the hunters are making an argument of like,
oh, I'm, you know, I'm controlling the predators,or I'm doing this, or I'm doing that for biodiversity,
or I'm doing that for farmers who are suffering crops like, and,you know, like this saying, like,
(57:17):
if you're if you're so worried about that farmer,you know, that farmer would give you a shovel and they get you this.
So, so I think we need to be honest and say like, yeah,we we doing that because we like it, but because we are
part of a system that supports biodiversity,that supports habitat conservation.
That's why that is beneficial.
(57:40):
Yes, yes.
And I usually say to people like thisthat I and other recreational hunters, obviously,
as the name implies, as the term implies, we huntbecause we think it's it's a good experience.
But the reason that the Swedish authorities lets us hunt the bears
is not that they think that we should have a good experience, it'sbecause we become their management tool.
(58:06):
So this is just so you know, there's there's very different motivationsdepending on where in the system you are.
Obviously the, the Swedish authorities wants the bears to be hunted,to keep down the human wildlife conflict and to,
to to maintain the bear population at, at some stable levelthat they have decided and, and what have you,
(58:27):
they don't care that that we are having a good time or not,and they are not in it for the money.
So there's different motivations all over the place.
But obviously the reason that we do it voluntarilyand absolutely for free is that we really, really like to do it.
And as as you, I sometimes hear hunters say, well,we do this to, to protect nature in Africa.
(58:51):
That's that's entirely bullshit. It's nice to know.
It's nice to know that a consequence of the money we put down in Africais that people protect nature, but we're not doing the protection.
We are shooting the animals because we like that experience.
And it's a part of the whole system, and it's absolutely necessary.
(59:11):
And we allow to feel good about contract rushing to that.
But it's not why we go to Africa.
I mean, and exactly there, that dishonestywhen people fail to admit that is a very soft spot that we have
and makes us a very easy target for for the argument,why don't you just send Africa check?
(59:34):
I don't send Africa check because for the very same reasonsthat everybody else don't, I would like to go hunting.
I would like to pay for it,but I'm not sending checks all over the place.
Nobody's doing that. Not even the anti hunters. Exactly.
I remember,I remember you posted a video, with a, with a dead elephant where
(59:54):
there was like an action of, like, hey, could you,you can buy this elephant, like, please.
You are like bunch of prominentanti hunting people, millionaires, mostly millionaires.
Hey, buy that elephant.
And then. And then you were just standing next to dead.
(01:00:14):
And if I was like, hey, no, it's because we offeredthis herd of elephants for free to all these, anti hunting millionaires
because of the fact on the ground in southern Africa is that inmany places there's too many elephants and there is no takers.
Nobody wants elephants,not even for free, because there's no more habitat left for them.
(01:00:36):
And that and in spite of that, we always have.
What if somebody goes in and says publicly,
we have to we have to take out some of the elephants in this areabecause they're destroying the habitat.
You have this massive shitstorm, but no alternatives.
So what we did in that case was that we, in cooperationwith a landowner in South Africa, offered a herd
(01:00:57):
of 15 elephants for free to anybody who would take itand show us how to manage elephants without hunting.
And then everybody went completely silent
because, I mean, it's free.
So Ricky Travis and all those guys who who are very loud,loudly against hunting, we contacted them directly.
(01:01:19):
They were contacted by by fans defense and sent the offerto their managers and to movie companies they cooperated with.
And, you know, it was it was shared by the tens of thousands.
And all we heard was sound of crickets, complete silence.
And then the video we refer to was when the landowner eventuallyhad to shoot those elephants.
(01:01:44):
And even then, because usually ifif I were to make a video where I stand in front of a dead actually
female elephant, it was an elephant cow,
there would be a massive shitstorm, but in this case, silence.
Yeah.
That's,sometimes silence speaks louder than words, as they say, yes, yes, yes.
(01:02:05):
And that that said, that hole put your moneywhere your mouth is. Argument is, is very difficult to get around.
Folks, listen, before we wrap this up,just a reminder. Subscribe to my newsletter.
The link is in the description of the show.
And yes, what if you look at your crystal ball into your crystal ball?
How do you see the future of hunting playing out?
(01:02:28):
There are a lot of people who are very,
you know, concerned or even just gave up and say like,yeah, hunting will be gone in the next however many years.
I even recently spoke with fly anglers and one of them were convincedthat within 20 years there will be no fly angling anymore.
(01:02:52):
Some people say that hunting always going to be around.
Maybe it's just not going to be recreational hunting.
What are your views like? If you look at your crystal ballin, you know, ten, 30, 50 years, what do you see?
Well, I'm more optimistic than I used to be just 3 or 5 years ago,because what we see,
(01:03:12):
especially here in Scandinavia,where we have regular polls among non hunters, is that,
the acceptance of hunting is growing
and we already has a majority of the non hunting populationin favor of the kinds of hunting we do here in Scandinavia.
And what we have seen movethat public opinion is information information information.
(01:03:38):
We've been doing this for a lot of us for maybe ten years,and we can really see the numbers move in favor of hunting.
Most non hunters are,
fairly intelligent people.
And they do understand these fairly simple arguments that we have.
Our problem has been that we haven't been heard.
(01:03:59):
And it's also been that we have actually hunters have been hiding,hiding a bit for many, many years.
And that's over. And and we can see a positive effect of that.
Obviously the situation is less, bright in countries like the UK wherewhere you have a big, big opposition to any kind of hunting.
(01:04:21):
But even there we are moving in the right direction.
What, what I see, you know,we have these proposed, hunting trophy import patents and I think they,
they are moving to the fourth try or something like thatin as many years.
And every time they try,it gets more and more difficult for them to go through with it,
(01:04:43):
because we have moreand more factual scientific arguments on the table and more and more,
parliamentarians actually daring to say, well,
the science is telling us that we might hurt wildlifewith this, with this, with this ban.
So let's step back and think about it.
(01:05:03):
So I think we are slowly moving in the right directionand and I'm very optimistic.
I think hunting will will stay for, for at least our time.
And I definitely agree that in, in, in countrieswhere we have large wildlife,
hunting will definitely never go away because we do need it as a tool.
(01:05:25):
Take take wild boar.
It's impossible to live coexist with wild boars without huntingbecause the the, the population explodes, explodes within a few years.
If you do not keep it at a certain level.
And if you don't, it's not only, is not only impossible to, to, to havecrops in the field, it also gets very difficult to maintain gardens.
(01:05:49):
And you know,
cemeteries and stuff like that.
They do make a lot of damage.
So we will always have some kind of hunting.
But I'm very optimistic that we will also also have,recreational hunting in the future.
Fantastic.
So, yes, just to really drop this off, any advice for hunters
(01:06:10):
how to talk about hunting, how to communicate about what they do
with knowing the hunters with with people who don't understand,maybe even with the with the armed, the hunters.
One is, as we talked about just before, be honest.
Be honest about it. We have nothing to hide.
Another thing is p factual.
(01:06:31):
Know your facts. I mean, if you don't know C,then say you don't know. Just don't make things up.
And certainly we could be a lot betterat respecting other people's feelings.
We gain nothing by showing non huntersa close up photo of of a head shot baboon.
I mean images that are,
(01:06:54):
scaring people does nothing good for hunting.
And to be honest, every single shitstorm that we had on social mediafor the last many, many years always started with a bad trophy photo.
And I'm not saying that we should ban trophy photos or anything,but I'm saying that we are allowed to just think a little bit
(01:07:14):
about what we throw into people's faces,and we gain nothing by by provoking them.
It's not.
It's not that we, supposed to be dishonest about it,but but why deliberately provoke people?
So those those are my three advices on onhow to communicate this for the future.
And that way this there were words of wisdom.
(01:07:37):
Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.
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