Recreational Hunting, Conservation and Rural Livelihoods: Science and Practice

For most conservationists hunting is at best to be viewed with suspicion, since over-exploitation is one of the causes of species’ decline. Recreational hunting is particularly controversial since it appears to be an unnecessary activity in an area of risk.

Hunters, on the other hand, who number many millions and spend large sums of money on their sport, assert a strong interest in conserving healthy populations of their quarry and its habitat. They see themselves as continuing traditions older than recorded history and are puzzled when wider society seeks to question the appropriateness of what they do from a conservation or ethical perspective.

Those who see sustainable use of wildlife as an incentive for conservation and a benefit for people admit that in practice controlling activities such as trophy hunting of antelopes or bags of migrating birds can be difficult.

The aim of this symposium is to get behind the rhetoric and the suspicion and to examine objectively whether recreational hunting does genuinely contribute to wildlife conservation and rural livelihoods and, if it does, to identify factors that enhance that contribution.

In the light of moves around the world to ban or restrict certain forms of hunting and fishing would the abolition of recreational hunting be a conservation gain or loss?

Recreational Hunting, Conservation and Rural Livelihoods: Science and Practice symposium abstracts (319 KB)