The Business of Conservation and the Edge of Existence Extended Trailer

[bearpaw]

Edge of Existence Extended Trailer

The Business of Conservation
https://www.conservationfrontlines.org/2020/01/the-business-of-conservation/?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email

Photographic tourism is great in places where large animals roam and the scenery is spellbinding, but that’s not always the case in Africa. In places where landscape and wildlife are mundane, trophy hunting is the better land-use option. Resource economist Jon Barnes confirmed this with a detailed analysis. He concluded that, for the sake of wildlife in large areas of Botswana, a ban on consumptive use such as hunting “would seriously jeopardize wildlife conservation.”

Here’s why that’s the case: Governments have to justify all use of the land in economic terms. If trophy hunting is not available to some communities, then their alternative is raising livestock, which takes a heavy toll on land and water resources. So it really does make more sense to lose an individual animal of an individual species now and then, rather than risk losing an entire ecosystem. Other stakeholders agree.

Wilderness Safaris, a leading photo-tourism operator, has a position paper on trophy hunting, stating in effect that ecotourism on its own cannot ensure the conservation of Africa as a whole and that hunting has been vital in mainstream destinations like South Africa and less-mainstream destinations like Central African Republic or Burkina Faso.

In South Africa, game farms have literally changed the landscape. In 2002, there were fewer than 5,000. [In 2014], there were over 12,000. Those farms generate revenue in various ways, ranging from ecotourism to the sale of live animals, but hunting makes the most money by far. And it’s been good for the ecosystem. [In 2014], there were 20,900 white rhinos in the country, more than in all the rest of Africa. And the wildlife population has gone from 575,000 [animals] in 1966 to 18.6 million [in 2014].

None of this would come as news to Teddy Roosevelt, one of the fathers of the conservation movement, as well as an avid hunter and fisherman like myself. After he left the White House, he toured Africa and recorded his experiences in his book African Game Trails. In it, he argues for a program of game reserves set aside for hunting in order to preserve animals.

It stands to reason: If the long-term survival of an animal means the long-term financial sustenance of a community, then that animal will likely survive. The hunting industry has its flaws and failures. The goal must be to establish a tourism that benefits the communities living with these animals in a way that is ethical and sustainable.

[nwwanderer]

Which goes a long way explaining why WDFW has issues, they have taken the value of the animals from the people that feed them, private land owners.

[Windwalker]

"It stands to reason: If the long-term survival of an animal means the long-term financial sustenance of a community, then that animal will likely survive. "
On its face is a viable total solution.

But in Africa, from what little I have seen. The political corruption and disparity of wealth/poverty doubles down on the complications & destroys everything it touches. 

Africa is a wealth of wild beauty struggling through cracks of time.

“Africa is not a country, but it is a continent like none other. It has that which is elegantly vast or awfully little.”   

“Africa changes you forever, like nowhere on earth. Once you have been there, you will never be the same. But how do you begin to describe its magic to someone who has never felt it?
How can you explain the fascination of this vast, dusty continent, whose oldest roads are elephant paths?"

“Everything in Africa bites, but the safari bug is worst of all. If there were one more thing I could do, it would be to go on safari once again.”