Time to act

A pragmatic approach is now needed to save Africa’s wildlife – even if the method might seen unpalatable, says our conservationist columnist

May’s announcement by Botswana president Mokgweetsi Masisi to reintroduce trophy hunting has caused a ruckus across the globe. This is a watershed moment for the business of African wildlife conservation. What is required is a carefully thought-out economic solution that relies on sound business innovation rather than emotion.

Africa’s human population is growing exponentially (doubling from 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion by 2050). As it does so, animals are crowded into smaller wilderness areas. Those areas need to be economically viable as a land use option, or that burgeoning population will kill the animals and turn the wilderness into farmlands.

Masisi’s predecessor, Ian Khama, banned hunting in 2014, aligning Botswana with Kenya, which banned it as far back as 1977. In contrast, the country’s southern neighbours, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia, have trophy hunting as part of their tourism businesses (far away from the photographic safaris in almost all cases) and are asking for the reinstatement of trade in ivory products and rhino horn. Not surprisingly, this has appalled the prohibitionists.

So how has prohibition worked in Kenya, which has had more than 40 years of no hunting? It has lost between 70 and 80 per cent of its wild animals to illegal poaching. The reasons are corruption and the fact that the communities living

alongside the animals reap no benefits from this often dangerous relationship.

Most wild animals live outside national parks among rural communities and not only wreak havoc on their crops but also occasionally kill the humans they encounter. In Kenya, the state owns the animals and consequently they are of no value to the communities with whom they coexist. By contrast, the southern Africans – where trophy hunting is allowed – have, by and large, preserved their numbers despite waves of poaching across the continent because the animals have a measurable material value.

Contrast Kenya, where the elephant population has fallen decade after decade (although a recent survey suggests that for the moment numbers have stabilised), with Botswana, which allowed hunting until only five years ago, and where the elephant population has trebled over the past 30 years to an estimated 135,000, more than a quarter of the total left on the continent. In May, Zimbabwe, which boasts more than 54,000 elephants, even sold almost 100 of them to China and Dubai for an estimated US$2.7 million. It wants the 13-year ban on international ivory trade lifted so that it can sell its stockpile, estimated at US$300 million, a sum the Zimbabweans say would be useful for future conservation projects. Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Information says the country can’t sell its stockpile “because countries without elephants [Western nations] are telling those with them what to do with their animals”.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

What Masisi said when he was consulting rural communities on the way forward was significant. “I have expressed my bitter opposition to a tourism policy or activity that yields exotic ostentatiousness on one hand and right next to it you see a barefoot, malnourished black child.” He was, in effect, describing the luxury safari industry, one where guests will pay more than £2,000 per head per night to stay in a lavish lodge, while all around poor communities live off the scraps of this feast.

A more sustainable business model is now required across Africa’s wildlife areas, including trophy hunting (which has high returns) in remote locations, photographic tourism with measurable rewards for the rural communities in the form of fees for land use, and, provided it can be policed, the resumption of global trade in animal products.

There have already been successful sustainable-use, community-friendly models operating, such as Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources), which worked until Robert Mugabe’s government pulled the plug. Namibia’s CBNRM (Community-Based Natural Resource Management) programme is a model to be admired and emulated. Namibia’s wildlife populations are growing and their intention is eventually to return to pre-colonial levels of wild animal populations.

This is the time for the business community to weigh in and play a commercial role in the salvation of Africa’s wildlife. If we can make viable, inclusive, sustainable businesses, we’ll save wild Africa for our grandchildren. If not, we’ll be left looking at these animals in zoos. The choice is ours.

A more sustainable business model is now required across Africa’s wildlife areas