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Can regulated hunting offer the best route to lion conservation? (Image: David Chancellor/Institute)

THE outraged public reaction to the killing of Cecil, Zimbabwe鈥檚 most famous lion, by a vacationing dentist shows just how romanticised lions are in the popular imagination.

The killing of the lion was a tragedy, but the attention to the details of the unpleasant hunt obscures a harsh reality. Field workers must struggle to balance lucrative trophy hunting with preventing lion populations from crashing still further, while locals who put up with lions on a daily basis speak of people-eating, cattle-killing beasts that carry out infanticide and are worthy of being hunted to extinction, and of gaining manhood by so doing.

In a new book, Lions in the Balance, ecologist Craig Packer writes: 鈥淟ions need trophy-hunting just as much as trophy-hunting needs lions.鈥� His plan is to kill only male lions over the age of 6, so cubs aren鈥檛 killed by a male lion seeking to safeguard his own progeny after mating with a mother that already has cubs.

This is a fresh approach to conservation, where hunting is essential to survival. It might just change the lion behaviour he describes in this sequel to his classic, Into Africa.

As he exposes corruption in Tanzania鈥檚 hunting industry and tries to get his plan adopted, diary entries show Packer and his colleagues taking on locals, hunters and megalomaniac politicians in a struggle to balance human needs, a lucrative hunting trade and true Serengeti science.

His brave accounts of blackmail and death threats are alarming. At one point, the book describes a desperate strategy to protect the ecosystem while pacifying the crooked policy-makers. Packer aimed to identify lions鈥� age by the fullness of their manes and by ear markings, but politicians refused, saying it would restrict the hunt.

The book makes compelling reading as we journey through pioneering science, dodging the influential government fat cats on the way. Packer is completely candid about the 鈥渆thics鈥� of those instrumental in the future of the King of the Beasts. Let鈥檚 hope someone will listen.