The majority of hunting blocks in Tanzania and (to a lesser extent) Zimbabwe were estimated to be viable, whereas the majority of those in Zambia and Mozambique were estimated to be unviable regardless of the status of lion hunting.
http://plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029332#article1.body1.sec3.p4

As shown in Table 6, under this model, the majority of hunting areas in the majority of studied countries are not viable under the current scenario:

Country areas currently unviable
Mozambique 92%
Namibia 67%
Tanzania 19%
Zambia 67%
Zimbabwe 44%

A central assumption of the article is that financial viability of hunting areas provides incentive to preserve habitat and wildlife. They suggest that reduced area of financially viable hunting operations “could result in a concomitant loss of habitat.” (p1) These results cast doubt on this assumption - if such large areas are already unviable, why would marginal change in this area be of concern?


This suggests that either Lindsey et al.’s model fails to accurately convey the incentives and workings of the trophy hunting industry, or that there are non-financial reasons why these businesses continue. Lindsey et al. suggest a “lifestyle element” of trophy hunting operators, but more important motivations are likely to be political – revenues generated from trophy hunting are important for wildlife bureaucracies and are often siphoned off to enrich corrupt, powerful individuals. See Sachedina (2008) for detailed examples from Tanzania.

This finding of widespread financial non-viability limits the usefulness of the results of the study. Clearly more work needs to be done to understand why operators persist in running businesses that are not financially viable.

Sachedina, H. T. 2008. Wildlife is Our Oil : Conservation , Livelihoods and NGOs in the Tarangire Ecosystem , Tanzania. PhD thesis from School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Retrieved from http://african-environments.ouce.ox.ac.uk/pdf/sachedina_dphil.pdf