The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) announced a plan last month to create five “mega living conservation landscapes” and consequently conserve an area equal to seven Kruger National Parks. Surely this is desirable?
The debate polarises around the means by which this will be achieved. This extension of conserved land is planned to be funded by biodiversity businesses, such as hunting, bioprospecting, and plant trade. Opponents of this strategy argue that there will be a large increase in the numbers of “big game hunters” and prey. They point out that 1.8 billion rand (89 million euros) was paid by 6,242 international clients who killed 36,500 animals in 2022. They estimate that the new plan will require an increase of 155% more international hunters to 15,900, killing 93,000 animals. This at a time when sporting trophy hunting is in rapid and significant decline.
In the opponents Daily Maverick article, “Government trying to slam through plan that will result in massive exploitation of wildlife” the DFFE is quoted: “The implementation of the strategy will ensure safe and sustainable harvesting of game meat, job creation and rural economic development… There will be new business, investments, jobs and value chain opportunities that will have secondary benefits related to the commercialisation of this commodity. These benefits far outweigh the costs.”
This is described by those opposed to the DFFE’s plans as “a form of extractive conservation, based on the idea that what you consume you will conserve. … sacrificial animals being hunted to provide funds for the conservation of a species or biome…” To quote Dr Ross Harvey, the director of research at Good Governance Africa, a plan to commodify wildlife “ignores the biological reality that trophy hunting removes prime males (never ‘surplus’ males, which is a convenient myth).”
As the international sale of ivory and rhino horn is prohibited by CITES, there is a possibility that domestic trade could be stimulated. The opponents argue that developing a market for domestic trade in animal parts such as carved ivory or rhino horn as traditional medicine for Asian tourists was particularly “shocking”, and that it would stimulate their export.
Two weeks later came the riposte from a different group of conservationists, which included some of the people I know who are concerned with securing benefits for communities living in the buffer zones of national parks. Too often, people living in the buffer zones of national parks bear the costs and receive few, if any, benefits. Their Op-Ed is headed “SA’s new biodiversity strategy is a key move away from colonial fortress conservation.”
They begin by pointing out that: “If you have ever paid entry fees to a national park, paid to watch a wildlife documentary, stayed in a private game reserve, bought game meat for the braai or an indigenous plant for the garden, you have contributed to ‘monetising’ South Africa’s biodiversity. If you have the privilege of owning or working for a tourism operation or wildlife filmmaking company, you are definitely monetising biodiversity.” And, of course, that may include many of you reading this post.
National parks need money and “high levels of poverty alongside policies and practices that exclude people from using wildlife legally create fertile grounds for poaching. Turning this situation around requires improving livelihoods (ie, money) and linking them closely with biodiversity conservation.”
They point out that it was back in the 1970s that South Africa began to take an economic approach to wildlife conservation, granting wildlife ownership rights to landowners and creating a diverse and thriving wildlife industry on privately owned land. As they argue the “majority of rural Africans have been excluded, particularly those living in communal areas with no secure land tenure and therefore no legal ownership over wildlife.”
They argue that “the most encouraging aspect of the plan is its focus on inclusivity and bringing hitherto excluded rural communities into the biodiversity economy.” They recommend that South Africa should explore how community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes have worked in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia.
They conclude: “Creating and strengthening the link between biodiversity conservation and improved livelihoods is what this strategy is all about. This plan is neither underhanded nor out of line with the rights of all South Africans. On the contrary, it is grounded in Section 24(iii) of the Constitution, which requires ‘reasonable legislative and other measures… that secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development’.”
The polarised debate will continue. Many morally object to monetising wildlife and biodiversity. However, local communities need to benefit from the wildlife they live with, too. Fortress conservation locks the animals in and the local people out, enabling only tourists, some of them hunters, to access the wildlife.
Coincidentally, the BBC reports that the president of Botswana has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany after Germany’s environment ministry suggested that there should be stricter limits on importing trophies from hunting animals. Botswana’s President, Mokgweetsi Masisi, told German media this would only impoverish people in his country, pointing out that elephant numbers in Botswana had exploded as a result of conservation efforts, and hunting helped keep them in check.
A month or so earlier Botswana’s Wildlife Minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu threatened to send 10,000 elephants to London’s Hyde Park so British people could “have a taste of living alongside” them.” Elephants damage property, eat crops, and trample residents.”
