Events Calendar

Greening the Hunt

Abstract: This presentation explores a series of fundamental structural changes within the global trophy hunting industry leading to a rapidly differentiating market for particular hunting experiences. A popular form of hunting in South Africa known as "green hunting" illustrates the lengths to which hunting operators go to create modes of encounter between humans and wildlife that appeal to new classes of wildlife consumers. "Green hunts" (or "darting safaris") involve the non-lethal capture of big game, typically through the use of tranquilizer darts, and often for veterinary, wildlife management, or research purposes. Trophies acquired through green hunts are recorded and memorialized either photographically, or through the use of plaster and fiberglass castings of horns, tusks, and other features. Since they are conducted using non-lethal means, darting safaris are often marketed as “green” alternatives to traditional safaris by hunting operators. Whether this latest intervention in an increasingly diverse global hunting market represents a progressive change or an attempt to greenwash the industry is the subject of an ongoing debate.

Bio: Rick Schroeder is Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University. He previously served as Rutgers’ founding Director of the Center for African Studies and Chair of its Department of Geography. He is the author of two books and an edited collection, including Africa After Apartheid: South Africa, Race and Nation in Tanzania, which won the American Association of Geographers’ (AAG) Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography in 2012. He subsequently received the 2016 Robert Netting lifetime achievement award for research and professional activities that bridge Geography and Anthropology by the AAG’s Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group.

All talks are followed by an informal get-together at Pino's in Highland Park, unless otherwise noted.