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JOHANNESBURG––South African environmental affairs and tourism
minister Marthinus Van Schalwyk on May 30, 2005 expanded the scope of
an expert panel convened to review common game farming abuses to include
all aspects of game farming and hunting.
“It is possible that a partial or full moratorium on any hunting
of large predators may be required, and a complete ban on captive breeding
of large predators is not excluded from the range of possible policy options,”
Van Schalkwyk told Veronica Mohapeloa of BuaNews in Tshwane.
“The government is planning a sweeping reform of hunting laws––including
a possible moratorium on hunting lions and leopards,” predicted
Tony Carnie of the Cape Times. “This follows mounting concern about
‘canned’ lion shoots, policy discrepancies among provinces
and legal grey areas created by dropping fences between state and private
game reserves,” Carnie elaborated. “A panel is also to probe
the ownership, management, and impacts of the hunting industry.”
Said Van Schalwyk, “This should lay the basis for the development
of a coherent set of norms and standards that can be used to guide the
regulation of hunting.”
Van Schalwyk broadened the panel inquiry after an initial meeting earlier
in May identified far more threats to “regulated, responsible and
sustainable” hunting than he had anticipated, he said.
Television documentaries and the efforts of animal advocates have focused
attention on abuses associated with “canned” lion hunts, detailed
in Canned Lion Hunting: A National Disgrace, by <www.Canned-Lion.com>
proprietors Chris Mercer and Beverley Pervan. Formerly the directors of
the Kalahari Raptor Centre, Mercer and Pervan are also regular ANIMAL
PEOPLE book reviewers.
But the “canned lion” issue is only part of the game farming
conundrum.
Former agricultural land converted to game farming now occupies three
times as much acreage in South Africa as the national park system, observed
World of Birds Wildlife Sanctuary operator Walter Mangold, of Hout Bay,
in a faxed statement to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“Game farming is just another name for ‘sustainable use,’”
Mangold pointed out. “Sustainable exploitation sems to have become
the best and perhaps only solution to protect Africa’s wildlife
from extinction.”
On paper, at least, “The commercial value of game has long surpassed
the value of domestic wildlife,” Mangold continued. “This
is considered a tremendous conservation achievement. But all is not well.”
Because game farmers have speculatively bred wildlife like cattle, gambling
that the limited market might expand to absorb the supply, “There
is now a surplus of 425,000 harvestable game animals per year, of which
25,000 are trophy animals,” explained Mangold. “These 425,000
animals must be culled to ensure continued grazing for the remainder and
the annual additions,” unless herd fecundity is abruptly and artificially
controlled.
If game farmers do not slow breeding cycles that they have accelerated
beyond the longterm carrying capacity of the habitat, “Game numbers
will keep rising year after year,” continued Mangold. “The
numbers to be culled will grow.
“The main problem,” in Mangold’s assessment, “is
that the demand for venison has not kept step with the need for culling,
and therefore game farmers are almost totally dependant on fees from hunters.
Game farming is not a charitable exercise; it is a hard-core business
that must show big profits. Wildlife conservation is coincidental.
“TV viewers are shown the nicer and more appealing parts of game
manipulation and game farming,” Mangold said. “The reality
of making it work and pay can be gruesome.”
In purely economic terms, said Mangold, “Unless new and successful
marketing strategies are found to profitably use the game surplus, game
farming and the large-scale survival of wildlife may not be maintained.
“Let us not fool ourselves,” Mangold concluded. “The
same principle of sustained exploitation applies at our national parks.”
While private game farmers produce hooved and horned stock, and lions,
who are easily bred in close confinement, the national parks of southern
Africa have often become de facto elephant and rhino farms.
Elephants
Poached to the verge of extirpation from much of their range during the
1980s, and still menaced in less stable nations, African elephants remained
plentiful in South Africa and several neighboring states when the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species in 1989 banned transboundary
traffic in elephant ivory.
From 6,000 to 12,000 elephants per year are poached in southern Sudan,
Congo, the Central African Republic, Kenya, and Chad, according to wildlife
traffic researcher Esmond Martin of Nairobi, whose most recent studies
were funded by Care For The Wild.
But while the ivory trade ban has never altogether stopped elephant poaching,
it has slowed the loss of elephants from much of Africa, including Kenya,
where the major problem is the proximity of elephant populations to virtually
lawless Sudan and Somalia. The ivory trade ban has also slowed elephant
poaching in Asia.
In addition, the ivory trade ban set up the possibility that nations which
still have abundant elephants might eventually exploit a lucrative semi-monopoly.
Because ivory keeps in storage indefinitely, South Africa and the other
nations with plentiful elephants have had little motivation to limit elephant
reproduction by means other than culling, while building immense ivory
stockpiles.
“One of the most promising options for controlling pachyderm populations
is contraception,” reported Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent
Laurie Goering in March 2005, as South Africa moved to resume population
control elephant culling, after 10 years of culling only “problem”
elephants.
“A birth control vaccine for elephant cows, first tried in Kruger
National Park in 1996, proved 80% effective on trial animals and now is
used with nearly 100 percent success at five private reserves across South
Africa,” Goering continued. “The vaccine, unlike some hormone
implants also tested on elephants, appears to cause no behavioral or societal
disruption, said J.J. van Altena, a private wildlife specialist who helped
monitor Kruger’s contraception testing in the 1990s.”
Also in March 2005, University of Pretoria zoologist Rudi van Aarde demolished
the ecological rationale for culling elephants in his Cecily Niven Memorial
Lecture at the Sasol Scifest in Grahamstown. To be invited to deliver
the Cecily Niven Memorial Lecture is considered the highest honor in South
African science. Van Aarde pointed out that the trees that elephants are
maligned for destroying are part of an ecosystem that grew up after intensive
ivory hunting and 19th century rinderpest epidemics, spread by sheep and
cattle farmers, had thoroughly depleted native wildlife.
The veld as South Africans came to know it, van Aarde demonstrated, was
not the veld that had persisted through previous millennia. Recent elephant
damage might be seen as an elephantine effort to restore the habitat.
Representatives of six of the seven nations belonging to the Southern
African Development Community met at Victoria Falls during the last week
of May 2005 to discuss plans for opening and developing the elephant ivory
market, along with anciliary markets for other elephant byproducts. Botswana,
Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe participated. Angola
abstained, without public explanation.
Zimbabwean Parks and Wildlife Management Authority director-general Morris
Mtsambiwa promoted “the adoption of a serious advocacy and global
communication strategy to lobby for increased hunting sectors in all countries,”
the Zimbabwean government-controlled Harare Herald reported.
“It is in this view that we have stipulated in our strategies what
would happen to the hide, skin, ivory and the meat, so that those opposed
to the culling of elephants realise the great value of the resource to
our people,” Mtsambiwa said. “We are serious about advancing
our own values rather than those of the western world,” he added,
in a slap at animal advocates––ignoring that the trophy hunting
industry is an invention of the western world, and almost entirely depends
upon western money.
Immediately after the meeting, Zambian tourism minister Patrick Kalifungwa
opened elephant trophy hunting in the Chiawa, Rufunsa, and Lupande regions,
where elephant damage to crops has become a politically hot issue. Zambia
had already won CITES permission to export up to 40 elephant tusks.
On the same day that Kalifungwa reintroduced elephant hunting to Zambia,
Zambian Wildlife Authority public relations manager Maureen Mwape told
the Times of Zambia that ZAWA had “contracted a private firm to
cull about 200 hippos in the Luangwa River as a way of getting rid of
old animals.”
Despite Asian demand for hippo tooth ivory, as a substitute for elephant
tusk ivory, “We are not cropping the hippos,” Mwape insisted.
“We are only culling the hippos as part of our plan to pave way
for the new breed”––a regimen which is actually a textbook
definition of cropping.
Sharing loot
“Eco-tourism is seasonal and not well developed to benefit the local
community. When people are given the licences to kill the elephants, half
the money will go to the community,” Kalifungwa promised Chansa
Kabwela of the Lusaka Post.
If Zambian elephant hunting is managed like Zimbabwean elephant hunting,
what this actually means is that half the money will end up in the hands
of politically well-connected local strongmen, who will use much of it
to reinforce their own authority, in disregard of anything resembling
rule by law.
If hunting is managed in Zambia as it is in Tanzania, the national government
may soon seek a bigger piece of the action.
“The villagers of Ngarambe, Tanzania, were allowed to sell hunting
licences and shoot animals for meat so that they would no longer see wild
animals as pests,” BBC correspondent Dan Dickinson reported on April
14. “Selling hunting permits is big business: trophy fees in the
2004 season were $4,000 for an elephant, $2,000 for a lion, $600 for a
buffalo.”
Boasted Ngarambe village committee member Salum Njao to Dickinson, “A
lot of people are coming from other parts of the district to live here.
They see that our villagers have more money and more facilities. Other
villages are pleading with us to join the project and asking for help
in setting their own up.”
That threatened the government wildlife department revenue base, which
comes partly from leasing hunting concessions to private entrepreneurs.
Pressured by the Tanzania Hunting Operators Association, the government
of Tanzania recently revoked the right to sell hunting permits from Ngarambe
and leased the local franchise to a private company for the next five
years.
Rhinos
CITES protected rhinos at the same time as elephants. As of 1989, no nation
really had abundant rhinos, of either the black or white subspecies. Rhinos
reproduce much more slowly than elephants, and are also somewhat more
easily poached, since they live a relatively solitary existence: one rarely
warns others of an approaching threat, or has an opportunity to defend
others. The black rhino population had fallen from 65,000 to the verge
of extinction in the wild.
Rhinos are recovering, however, where actively protected, and are now
increasingly often being delivered into private custody. Though the arrangements
are nominally still for conservation purposes, “conservation”
can include being shot, for a high price, at least some of which returns
to the government.
“As an incentive to create new breeding areas in KwaZulu-Natal,
breeding [black rhino] population groups have been offered to approved
reserves,” explained Tony Carnie of the Cape Times on June 3, 2005.
“All the original adult animals will remain the property of KZN
Wildlife, but 50% of the progeny will become privately owned.”
KZN Wildlife has custody of about 470 of the present African population
of 3,500 black rhinos.
The
first black rhinos handed to the private sector under the KZN scheme were
sent to the Phinda/Mun-ya-Wana game reserve in 2004. “A second group
of 17 to 20 black rhinos will be released soon into the new Zulu-land
Rhino Reserve, southwest of Mkhuze town,” wrote Currie. “The
17,000 hectare reserve is owned by 12 ranchers who agreed to drop their
fences to form a breeding haven for an animal whose numbers have plummeted.”
Meanwhile, Currie wrote earlier, for the KwaZulu-Natal Mercury, “Hunters
are getting ready to shoot five black rhinos––the first time
this critically endangered species will have been hunted legally in South
Africa in more than three decades. The trophy bulls are likely to fetch
at least $175,000 each, a price which excludes hunting fee mark-ups and
accommodation costs.”
Both Namibia and South Africa have CITES permission to authorize the export
of up to five black rhino trophies apiece per year.
White rhinos have been legally hunted in KwaZulu-Natal since 1968.
Rhinos in Kenya
About 450 rhinos remain in Kenya, including a purported all-time high
count of 65 within Nairobi National Park, now almost surrounded by sprawling
suburbs of the national capital. The Nation, the leading Kenyan newspaper,
is skeptical of the numbers.
“For several years, bi-monthly ground counts done by the Kenya Wildlife
Service have not tallied more than 15,” The Nation editorialized
on May 19, 2005. “Where are the others hiding?
“Visitors to Nairobi National Park during the May Day weekend who
expected to enter a peaceable kingdom found themselves instead in a combat
zone,” The Nation editors wrote. “Aircraft, helicopters, lorries,
and a convoy of vehicles pursued the remaining rhinos in one of a series
of rhino translocations from the park to remote locations where they have
been poached out.”
The first two such sites are owned by leaders of the Laikipia Wildlife
Forum, which has fronted a series of recent attempts to undo the 1977
ban on sport hunting in Kenya. The Laikipia Wildlife Forum and other opponents
of the hunting ban are backed by USAid, Safari Club International, and
the African Wildlife Foundation.
“Ten [rhinos from Nairobi National Park] were moved last June to
Mugi Ranch in Laikipia,” The Nation recited. “Ten were captured
on May Day for Kuki Gallman’s Ol Ari Nyiro Ranch. There is talk
of more [rhino captures] planned for export.
“Instead of moving the rhinos,” The Nation recommended, Nairobi
National Park “should be promoted as a world-famous sanctuary on
the doorstep of a major metropolis, where visitors are guaranteed rhino
sightings.
“The rhino is a priceless asset in the hands of people who understand
business,” The Nation continued. “The 20 rhinos caught and
delivered at Government expense to Laikipia would be worth $3.5 million
(U.S.) in South Africa. By any standard that is serious money.”
The transfer of rhinos to Laikipia caught fire as a political issue after
four of the 10 rhinos delivered to Gallman died within days, reportedly
from pneumonia, possibly brought on by capture and transport stress.
Zimbabwe
The
worst-case scenario for many South African game farmers, most of whom
are of Boer or British descent, would be that fast-falling wildlife prices
might undermine their ability to avoid losing land to squatters of native
African descent, as in Zimbabwe.
Less than five years ago Zimbabwe had the most lucrative game farming
and trophy hunting industry in the world. Probably not actually profitable,
the Zimbabwean activity was (and is) intensively subsidized by CAMPFIRE,
the Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources, funded
by the U.S. Agency for International Development since 1989. The program
started as a bribe to ensure Zimbabwean compliance with the elephant ivory
trafficking ban, and a parallel ban on rhino horn trafficking.
Pushed through Congress in the name of elephant and rhino conservation,
CAMPFIRE was actually more a program to conserve private land ownership
under a nominally socialist one-party government.
During the past 15 years USAid has pumped more than $40 million into CAMPFIRE,
which has raised about $2.5 million per year in revenue, mostly from trophy
hunts.
CAMPFIRE has also functioned as a slush fund for paying off well-placed
members of the Zimbabwe African National Union– Patriotic Front.
Called ZANU-PF for short, this is Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s
military and political support base.
CAMPFIRE served throughout the 1990s as a convenient way to keep Zimbabwe
politically aligned with U.S. interests in southern Africa––and,
especially, to keep Mugabe from implementing land reforms promised when
he took power, which would have transferred to indigenous Africans vast
tracts of agricultural land which had been put into game farming by Zimbabweans
of European descent, the former rulers of apartheid Rhodesia.
Among the attractions of game farming was that it can be done without
hiring large numbers of indigenous African workers, who would normally
live on or near a plantation producing food or export crops.
As U.S. President George W. Bush moved into the White House in 2001, CAMPFIRE
was extolled by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the subsidiary
Center for Private Conservation as a model for wildlife management worldwide.
Both institutions, and Safari Club International, have deep influence
throughout the Bush administration and Republican majorities in the U.S.
House and Senate.
But the CAMPFIRE system was already collapsing. As corruption sapped the
Zimbabwean economy, the Mugabe regime kept power by allowing landless
supporters to forcibly occupy game farms, and other rural properties.
The former SAVE Valley Conservancy, a major CAMPFIRE beneficiary, was
among the first casualties.
Agricultural production plummeted, food shortages worsened, ZANU-PF began
using relief supplies as a further weapon to remain in charge. Tourists
and trophy hunters mostly stopped coming.
The Mugabe regime appears to have given up on any hope it might have had
of rebuilding tourism.
“Zimbabwe’s
national parks have been ordered to work with rural district councils
to begin the wholesale slaughter of big game,” London Independent
Johannesburg correspondent Basildon Peta reported on April 28, 2005. “National
park rangers said they had already shot 10 elephants in the past week.
The meat was barbecued at festivities to mark 25 years of independence.
Four of the animals were reportedly shot in view of tourists near Lake
Kariba, the largest man-made lake in Africa and a major wildlife haven.
“A giraffe was also killed to feed peasants in the Binga area during
the festivities,” Basildon Peta added, “but the meat disappeared.
It is believed that police and army officials took the meat for themselves.”
On May 3, 2005 the Zimbabe Parks & Wildlife Authority through the
Harare Herald solicited bids for the purchase of elephants.
“State radio said the elephants are not for export but for wildlife
farming,” the Cape Times reported. “A parks official said
it aimed to encourage the black recipients of 5,000 former white-owned
farms ‘to venture into wildlife production.’”
Zimbabwe currently claims 80,000 to 100,000 elephants, with a wildlife
reserve carrying capacity of 45,000, but the official data is widely considered
suspect. —M.C.
