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Zambia cancels all trophy hunting licenses and orders investigation into corruption.
http://blog.africageographic.com/africa ... -licences/

Very good news indeed! Thanks for posting the link Threedogs!

The word corruption unfortunately seems to be linked to whatever, whenever, no matter what, such a shame for our beautiful continent.

Yip, here we go again. We have got the Ian Michlers and the Steven Smiths of this world who only see bad in anything remotely connected to hunting. Yes, there are bad apples in the hunting fraternity, as in conservation, in sport, in government, you name it? If some anglers drive like hooligans, they stop beach driving for all. When a few unscrupulous hunters or game traders are caught, they ban all hunting. If one taxi driver kills a cyclist, do they ban taxis? If the Hansie Cronjes of the cricket world are guilty of fraud, do the ban all cricket?

Cut out the bad apples. Jail the officials, jail the hunters, jail everybody that does not follow the rules. Why does South Africa earn R80million per year out of hunting? It is because we strictly regulate the hunting. Look carefully at what this Michler chap is saying. He leaves the impression that the South African connection is mere speculation. Nothing has been proved.

Of course the Zambian Sables are much in demand by SA game breeders. The reason is because of their exceptional big horns. Now what the bunnyhuggers is telling the public is that those animals are shot when they arrive in SA. What they tend to ignore is the fact that those animals will never be shot but used to strengthen the existing gene pool. A breeder will pay up to R8 million for a decent bull and the offspring is sold to hunters or to other breeders. Remember all our trophy animals were shot by the likes of FC Selous and so-called British sportsmen as well as the early settlers.

We were then left with a weak or poor gene pool and the breeders had to look at Zambia to improve the herds. Zambian animals remained unscathed partially due to the 'protection' by the tsetse flies.

Why are cattle farmers always improving their herds? Because bigger animals attain better prices at the market after which the animals are slaughtered for human consumption For the same reason game animals are bred.

Fanatstic news - Great for the wildlife of Zambia -

Now if only this could happen in South Africa as well -

What is important and has to be kept in mind is that the Zambian Sable (those with the bigger horns) are not of the same gene pool/sub species as our (RSA) Sable Antelope (the Southern sub species).

It is amazing how separation can cause diversification, the Roan Antelope in the KNP are of the Eastern sub species and those in Mokala NP are of the Western sub species.

So we can continue forever, nature will always amaze me.