The Slaying Of Cecil The Lion

The Lion Kill...Hakuna Matata?

Social media is today spattered with outrage and anger over the sad demise of Cecil the lion. After the initial flood of emotional condemnation a new group of apologists and defenders has emerged, with many arguing that legally established hunting parks actually increase the number of lions because this ensures that many more lions are being bred, albeit specifically for hunting.

I would like to respond to that.

I have always understood that a misunderstanding of the power of incentives can lead to unforeseen consequences. Take the story I heard as a child about a cobra problem in India during the Raj. The local commissioner dealt with the snake epidemic by paying a bounty for any cobra skin handed in – thinking this would encourage the locals to hunt out and kill them.

What actually happened was that cobra farming began and quickly took off with the farmers breeding cobras purely to kill and skin them for the bounty – much easier than killing them in the wild.

Soon the commissioner was paying way more than anticipated and the cobra population hadn’t changed. So he immediately stopped the incentive – and then the cobra population really changed.

It doubled!

The farmers had released all their now worthless cobras into the wild…

Responding to incentives and unforeseen consequences.

So, should we actually encourage hunting so more lion breeders spring up to profit from it and thus increase the endangered lion population? Well, this too definitely works. Google it. Some argue it has saved the White Rhino.

Just before you applaud this triumph of contrarian logic, here is a thought experiment. Suspend your moral outrage for a paragraph or so. Imagine for a moment that our children suddenly became endangered, being murdered and raped at a staggering rate by paedophiles, and that there was suddenly a shortage of children as a result. It could be argued that setting up paedophile centres where these people could act out their depravity legally would actually increase the number of children because it would be profitable to meet the new demand. Baby farms would boom.

Would any sane person even contemplate this as preferable to just getting rid of the paedophiles?

So what is the difference? Well, hunters hunt for fun (not food, just fun) and paedophiles rape for fun (not procreation, just fun) – so far, so similar. The difference is in the treatment of the victims. The hunter’s victim is seen as having no inalienable right not to be hunted because it’s a lower level of sentient creature than a human child, which does have an inalienable right not to be raped and murdered…at least in theory.

So perhaps it is not about responding to incentives - perhaps it is about morality and rights?

Interesting that it is a debate very close to the main divide in political argument – the right believe in free markets  (incentives) whilst the left believe in a strong state (protection of the vulnerable).

That’s the debate – what actually does define humanity, that is the act of being humane, in the 21^st century? Is it a capitalism that condones granting the right to breed lions for profit, and by so doing assuage the bloodlust of hunters? Or is it a system that seeks first to protect our fellow creatures from the worst of ourselves?

Cecil the lion has perhaps achieved more in death than he ever could have in life.