Cecil the lion at Hwange national parks in 2015. Photograph: Reuters One way to pay for wildlife conservation is to allow the rich to bag a few animals for high prices. But critics see this approach as an exercise in neocolonialism By Cal Flyn Tue 21 Apr 2026 05.00 BST Last modified on Wed 22 Apr 2026 11.53 BST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google Y ou can kill almost anything if you’re willing to pay. Big or small. Land, water or air. Ten a penny or one of the last of its kind. There’s nearly always a way, though it might not make you popular. The Niassa special reserve, a vast reservation larger than Switzerland, stretches for 190 miles along the northern rim of Mozambique, taking in 4.2m hectares of woodland and rivers. The reserve, one of the world’s largest protected areas, is home to elephants, leopards, hyenas, zebras and about 1,000 wild lions. That word, however: protected. It applies to some, but not all, of its animal inhabitants. Each year, a specific number are set aside for sacrifice, for the greater good. Not long ago, I joined an expedition in Niassa, with one of Africa’s top game-hunting companies. Safari guide Paul Stones and his client, an American neurosurgeon in his early 70s, were preparing to shoot a cape buffalo with the expert assistance of two professional trackers: Mozambicans Sabite Mohamed and Tino Salvador. It took the trackers mere moments to find the first prints. The trail led us through the labyrinth of green and bronze. We passed along dusty, thorn-tangled riverbeds, then damper, cooler corridors of leaves set buzzing by tiny insects. The whole time we moved in silence. Suddenly, there was a movement in the tall golden grasses close at hand − something large, moving fast. Stones and his client swung their guns sharply towards the source of the noise. The trackers melted into the trees. A waterbuck burst from the grass, flinging vegetation aside like a curtain. It leapt, balletic, into the air, before departing stage left at a flat gallop. In the stunned pause afterwards I gulped with silent laughter, more from release of tension than comic effect. We walked on. Every year, clients of the trophy-hunting industry claim the lives of tens of thousands of wild animals across the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, where hunting interests control vast swathes of the wildest land, trophy hunters often directly subsidise conservation projects on the grandest scale. In 2014, the Texas oil heir Corey Knowlton is reported to have paid $350,000 for the pleasure of killing a critically endangered black rhino in Namibia. He made the winning bid at an auction aimed at raising funds for African conservation run by the Dallas Safari Club. Afterwards, Knowlton told the media that he had received death threats but that he made his kill with a clear conscience: “I felt like from day one it was benefiting the black rhino.” Conservation efforts, he said, were expensive; it took money to keep them alive. “I’m absolutely hell-bent on protecting this animal.” He said less about what motivated him to kill one. Professional hunters and trackers die too, in the pursuit of dangerous animals every year. Stones and his client voice reverence for what they call “fair chase”: an ethical distinction observed in certain sporting circles in which the quarry is felt to have a sporting chance of survival. Wild animals, moving freely through their natural habitat, are the platonic ideal. At the other end of the spectrum is the “canned hunting” industry in which animals, particularly lions, are bred for the kill, and held captive in fenced enclosures. From this point of view, the larger and wilder the enclosure, and the freer the movement of the animal, the better. And Niassa is one of the very biggest and wildest game reserves in the world. Day after day, for 10 days, Stones and his client rose before dawn, dressed themselves in clothes of a drab dry-leaf green and set out on the trail. By the time the sun was high in the sky and the gu