Editor’s Note: Dr Robert (Robbie) Kroger is a restoration ecologist originally from South Africa but now based in Memphis, Tennessee. His work through the non-profit he started The Origins Foundation (formerly Blood Origins) aims to showcase the true consequence, benefit, and impact of sustainable use of wildlife globally. Through his conservation work across Africa, Kroger has a network of contacts who contributed information to this story.
Whenever a lion or elephant or some other animal that has been named by the general public is hunted, there is an immediate furor across the world. This is understandable. There are those who will never accept hunting, and who have strong personal beliefs that no animals should ever be harmed by humans. In many cases, these detractors will decry hunting as wholly unethical even before all the facts come to light. Blondie the lion is a case in point.
To catch you up to speed, Blondie was reportedly a five-year-old lion in Zimbabwe that was known to have spent time in Hwange National Park. The male lion, which had been fitted with a GPS collar for research purposes, was taken by a hunter in the Gwayi Environmental Conservation Area three weeks ago, and 10 kilometers from the park boundary.
The safari and photojournalism organization that claims to have collared Blondie, Africa Geographic, has blasted the hunt and those involved as “deeply unethical.” Most major news outlets have echoed this characterization, even though many questions surrounding the hunt remain.
AG and others have suggested that the lion was drawn out of the national park with the use of bait, and as a result, lured to its death. They’ve also taken issue with the lion’s age, its status as leader of a pride, and the fact that it was shot while wearing a GPS collar.
And because of where the lion was killed, Blondie is already being referred to as the next Cecil. Here’s why that could be bad for the global hunting community and African wildlife conservation as a whole.
What We Know So Far
The lion known as “Blondie” was taken sometime during the week of June 29 by a travelling hunter who was being guided by a professional hunter who is a member of the Zimbabwe Professional Guides Association. Neither the PH nor the hunter’s identity have officially been made public, but this hasn’t kept some social media users and news outlets from releasing that information.
It’s unclear if Blondie was being specifically targeted on this hunt. A liaison with the ZPGA, who chose to remain anonymous, told Outdoor Life that bait was used for this hunt on the ECA. They clarified, however, that the lion was hunted and killed as it was encountered on the open savanna.
The ZPGA also made clear that no laws were broken. Baiting is legal, and it’s the preferred method (using a bait carcass hanging from a tree) for hunting lions in Zimbabwe because it helps present a cleaner shot and allows hunters to be more selective about which lion they are taking. It’s also very difficult to use bait to “lure in” one specific lion. Baits are typically hung in a general area, and hunters will then wait to determine the right male lion to harvest.
Conflicting Details
This gets at another pointed criticism behind the hunt for Blondie: the lion’s age. Although there are no legal age requirements for harvesting a lion in Zimbabwe, there is a strict rule that if a lion is to be exported out of the country, it must be at least 5 years old. Blondie met this minimum requirement.
Confusingly, there is a photo on Imvelo’s website, a high end photography lodge, that shows a pride picture in which “Blondie” occurs, showing he could possibly be 8 years old. The lodge has cataloged a timeline of lion pride dynamics.
Could this be the same Blondie, or another lion in the same system, with a blonde mane, similarly named “Blondie”? This fits with age evaluations from lion hunting professionals of the picture of the hunted lion, suggesting he looks older than a 5-year-old lion.
The ZPGA spokesperson added that both the PH and the hunter assessed the lion before the shot, and neither of them noticed its collar. That collar isn’t visible in the blurred photo of the lion after it was killed, and it’s unclear if the collar was removed prior to the picture being taken, or if it’s just being covered up by the lion’s mane.
According to reports and past photographs, Blondie led a pride of two lionesses and 10 cubs. But according to the ZPGA, there were no visible cubs or other lions in the vicinity when the male lion was shot. Additionally there is some conflicting information coming from blog posts around Blondie, and a discussion of a coalition conflict that left him alone. One post said he lost his pride to a rival male coalition in May of 2025. This blog post has since been removed for some reason. To further confirm unrest in lion pride dynamics in the area, lion cubs were purported to have shown up at a photographic lodge in the last couple of months, and a problem lioness was removed from these community lands in the same area. These multiple anecdotes suggest that there was possible significant turmoil among lion prides in the area, and they support the idea that Blondie did not have a pride, counter to what has been reported elsewhere.
Without the collaring data, it is hard to determine whether Blondie was actually “lured out” from the national park with bait, as some have reported. Did the lion spend most of its time in the park and then decide to leave the park’s borders? Or was it a roaming lion that only entered the park on occasion? These are questions that only the spatial GPS collaring data can answer.
However, if more information does come to light proving that the PH or the hunter skirted fair-chase hunting ethics, then Blondie’s story, like the one that involved Cecil the lion, would do even more damage to the global hunting community and its reputation.
The Reality (and Risks) of Lion Hunting in Africa
Much of the outrage from the general public has been reminiscent of that infamous hunt in 2015, when Cecil was killed on community land adjacent to Hwange National Park. Cecil was another well-known male lion that also wore a GPS collar, and the hunter who killed it, Walter Palmer, was dubbed the “most hated dentist in America.” It took years for the world’s condemnation to subside, and judging by the current reaction to Blondie, some of that anger still lingers in places. However, instead of focusing on one lion, it is important to understand that Hwange is a testament to how hunting has and is providing significant economic value to lions in the area through sustainable use.
Looking at the larger Hwange ecosystem, lion quotas have guided hunting in the area for the last 30 or so years. Between 1999 and 2015, 65 lions were killed either by hunters or by government contractors through PAC (which stands for problem animal control.) It’s likely that a similar number of lions have been taken over the last 10 years, and their populations still remain healthy in the region today.
Zooming out beyond Hwange into the rest of Africa, a consistent pattern begins to emerge around lion populations. Many of the areas in Africa where lion populations are sustainable and healthy are the same areas where lion hunting is allowed. In Zimbabwe, this would be places like Hwange, Bubye Valley Conservancy, and Save Valley Conservancy. Moving over to Mozambique, sustainable hunting of game and lions (combined with re-introductions from South Africa) has coincided with stable to increasing populations in places like the Niassa Reserve in the northern part of the country, and Coutada 11, where 24 lions have increased to over 100, bolstering the total African wild lion populations by over 6%. This is all due to conservation programs that include hunting as a key funding and management mechanism.
The list goes on, but a common thread in all these locations is that the sustainable hunting of lions contributes to the wildlife conservation economy, and it actually helps protect lion populations. People originally started hunting in these areas because they had healthy lion populations, but over time, it’s because of carefully regulated hunting that lions’ success has been ensured. A wild lion hunt in any of these areas costs upwards of $45,000 to $120,000. That money from international hunters gives lions tangible value among the locals who live with them.
By contrast, many of the regions in Africa that are seeing lion populations decline are places where conflicts between lions, people, and farmers are occurring. These are also the places where lions aren’t being hunted sustainably. One of the greatest threats to African lions today is poisoning by poachers, and this is much less common in or near areas where regulated hunting occurs. Poisoning incidents in Hwange are few and far between.
The reality is that anti-hunting proponents can stand on their soap box and shout from the rooftops of the digital media world that the killing of Blondie was a travesty. And many will say it was unethical regardless of what facts come out. However, the fact that Hwange has a healthy population of lions, and those lions continually spill out of the National Park into the adjacent, surrounding community lands, suggests lions are doing very well there.
In this debate we should ask ourselves: What is our end goal when it comes to lion conservation? If the answer is for our kids and grandkids to have healthy wildlife populations, then the Hwange ecosystem and other areas where wildlife is sustainably hunted should not be maligned just for allowing hunters. Hwange has had 30 years of sustainable hunting history with the support of surrounding communities. Lions are still plentiful there today. That’s an anomaly in Africa, and something to be celebrated.
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