Hunter, who trekked to Africa to bag rhino for Brigham Young University says trophy will help conserve the species
By Brian Maffly The Salt Lake Tribune
Although he kills wild animals, Fred Morris said he is motivated by a desire to conserve them. "The hunted animals of the world are thriving because that's where the money goes," Morris said. "The white rhino I shot probably isn't for it, but the rest of the population is cheering." Fred Morris, a Draper businessman and prolific trophy hunter, took part in a safari to South Africa last year to kill a southern white rhino whose skin is now being mounted for display at Brigham Young University's Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. The exhibit highlights an ironic situation in which rare wildlife is killed for the sake of educating the public about endangered species and raising money for their conservation.
Last year, the museum recruited Morris, one of its benefactors, to hunt a white rhino at South Africa's Mkuze National Park in Natal province.
"They deemed they had some surplus rhinos or they never would have harmed any of them," said Wesley "Skip" Skidmore, the museum's vertebrates collection manager.
"I also want a hippopotamus and a life-sized giraffe. We already have an elephant," Skidmore said. The museum was interested in the rhino because it was available and it could rely on Morris to go out and get it. "We don't have the money to buy one," he said.
Museum officials are confident the regulated killing and export of Africa's rare animals poses no threat to these species. The museum hopes to acquire more skins of large animals from Africa. Mkuze National Park sells three or four rhino tags a year for $30,000 each. Only large mature males, which are too massive to move out of the park, are targeted. The proceeds underwrite South Africa's program to populate other areas with Mkuze's excess rhinos, according to Morris.
"It was a privilege, but it is expensive. It's a way to put money into wildlife and know that it really does something," he said.
The recovery of southern Africa's white rhinos, among the world's largest land mammals, is a conservation success story and Mkuze played a central role, according to Skidmore. Hunters and farmers nearly eradicated these animals by the 1900s, but in the decades since the numbers of southern whites in the wild have rebounded to more than 11,000. The northern white subspecies, however, remains critically endangered.
Over the next two or three months, taxidermists will mount Morris' rhino skin on an expandable polyurethane form as part of an ongoing exhibit at the Bean museum. Visitors will be able to observe Skidmore work the skin in the central atrium.
Because Skidmore didn't have access to the full carcass, he had to pick a form out of a catalog. Meanwhile, the skin is at the museum in a freezer, where it has been folded up to the size of a suitcase.
Skidmore's taxidermy project will be on display through January. Later, the rhino will join an elephant that Skidmore mounted two years ago in a new savanna water hole exhibit. A different donor collected the elephant skin from Botswana.
Morris hunted on the last of three permits issued at Mkuze last year. The first hunter was killed by his quarry and the second was gored. "It's not a test of your manhood to kill a white rhino with a high-powered rifle. It was exciting, but it was never dangerous. It just so happened that the hunters who hunted the two permits before me made some mistakes," Morris said. He dropped his rhino with a .375-caliber H&H magnum rifle shot after stalking the animal for two days.
Morris has applied to buy a $250,000 permit to hunt a rare black rhino in Namibia's Etosha National Park. But even if he gets lucky and wins the permit, he still would have difficulty exporting the skin to the United States to donate to the Bean because black rhinos are listed as endangered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also called CITES. "I will not hunt it if it can't be imported for public viewing," Morris said.
He has hunted in 160 countries and has filled his Draper residence with 400 birds and animals he has shot. "Many of them you may never see except here," he says.
Fred Morris, of Draper, sits in his home surrounded by more than 430 animal mounts. Morris has been trophy-hunting for more than 30 years in more than 160 countries, recently killed a white rhino that will be on display at Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at BYU. (photo: Jim Urquhart/Salt Lake Tribune)BYU's Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum 645 E. 1430 North, Provo 801-422-5051
Contact Link: http://lifesciences.byu.edu/home/contact.aspx?to=Monte+L+Bean+Museum
also, please consider writing to CITES:
(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)
CITES Secretariat
International Environment House
Chemin des Anémones
CH-1219 Châtelaine, Geneva
Switzerland
Tel: +41-(0)22-917-81-39/40
Fax: +41-(0)22-797-34-17
Email: info@cites.org
