By Rafael Rosas (’20)
The past month has been a combination of camping with a near-complete lack of WiFi and the hectic workload associated with the end of every term at Dartmouth. Our time in Namibia flew by. I’m writing this in Botswanan airspace, drinking terrible airplane coffee, which is still an upgrade from the coffee powder I have grown accustomed to on this FSP.
So much has happened the past month, I will try to be as brief as possible. After visiting the Cheetah Conservation Fund, we spent a week visiting and learning about the three kinds of conservation areas in Namibia: public national parks, communal conservancies, and private game reserves. Between the three, 48% of Namibia’s total land area is under conservation – a particularly refreshing statistic when compared against the backdrop of the diminishing importance of national parks in the eyes of the American federal government.
We spent two days in Etosha National park, a strikingly beautiful region with very high mammalian biodiversity. My inner geologist was really happy there, since the park is a giant plane that was flattened and deposited by a seasonal glacial lake after the separation of Gondwana (a supercontinent that preceded Pangea) between 500 and 300 million years ago. While seeing such a variety of remarkably majestic animals never gets old, it was the same safari style we had already had plenty of in South Africa, so the novelty was gone (and I must admit, at risk of sounding crass, seeing a rhino and its calf in a car from 50m away in a fenced in park doesn’t really cut it after you’ve microchipped and DNA tested two other wild rhino). Our camp was right next to a waterhole, and being able to see such a wide array of animals in such close proximity was unforgettable. I think my soul ungulate is an Oryx. They’re so cool (and the second-best meat I’ve had in Namibia, after Zebra. Crocodile comes in third place).
A delicious dinner in Namibia of oysters and grilled crocodile meat!
Next, we went to a private game reserve, where we learned about the paradoxically critical role that hunting, of all things, plays in effective and successful conservation frameworks in Namibia. The hunting practiced on these game reserves are likely not what come to mind when you think of African hunting. For me, before coming to Namibia, that was the story of the American dentist that killed the famous and beloved Cecil the Lion from Zimbabwe. Long story short, in 2015 Cecil was lured out of the national park where regulations were in place, and then suffered a slow and painful death at the hands of the hunting group. The system used for ethical hunting in Namibia is complex and well-thought-out.
Note: hunting is NOT poaching. Poaching is defined as the “illegal hunt or catch of animals on land that is not one’s own or in contravention of official protection.” Poaching is an entirely separate, complicated issue.
There is an entire market and economy for the distribution of animals that are allowed to be hunted. Essentially, farmers whose private property is large enough to house wildlife bring wildlife in. They allow the wildlife to reproduce and live free and healthy on the property. Every year, each farm will set a quota for how many clients they will be accepting per year. The number of clients is highly variable, but 10-20 hunters per year can be typical. Those clients will then purchase hunting packages from the farm, and they will get to hunt oryx, kudu, zebra, springbok, Elan, other ungulates, and combinations of the options.
No animals that are endangered are hunted. A representative of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, or someone who is licensed to represent them, must accompany every hunt to ensure that laws are followed and nothing that is not allowed to be hunted is. All tracking of the animals must be done on foot: no vehicles can be used to assist the hunt. No traps can be used, and most surprisingly to me, no automatic or semi-automatic weapons are allowed to be used for the hunt because of how easy it is to kill an animal with one of those. Let that sink in: southern African hunting safaris have more gun control legislation to protect their animals than the United States of America has to protect its citizens. All of these things are meant to create what is called a “fair chase” hunting environment. They are meant to give the animal as fair a chance as possible, and consequently only attract experienced, ethical hunters. No meats are allowed to be exported to the US or the EU, the two largest sources of clientele, so after the hunters consume what they want from the animal, the rest of the meat is given to a local butcher to be redistributed to surrounding impoverished communities.
Some of my fellow FSPers exiting the car after a game drive on the private game reserve.
Communal conservancies are similar to the private game reserves in Namibia, except instead of being owned by old white men who likely acquired the land during apartheid after it was taken from indigenous black people. When Germany lost control on Namibia, it was made a territory of South Africa, and the racist apartheid regime extended to Namibia as well. In communal conservancies the land is a communal resource that belongs to the traditional authorities (chiefs and tribal elders). The money made from communal conservancies is then invested in the community. Clinics, gravel roads, and high school scholarships (since children typically will stop going to school by 7th grade) are some of the larger investments these conservancies make.
Communal conservancies often practice both photographic safari tourism and fair-chase hunting, though they operate slightly differently. Every year, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism gives a quota to a community of how many of each kind of animal they can sell to a hunter. That total is further broken into three categories:
- the number of that species that are labeled as “problem animals” that can be either hunted by the community itself or sold to an overseas hunter. These are individual animals that for some reason have become very difficult to live with for the community, like an elephant that regularly eats the vegetables from the community garden, or a lion that consistently feeds on livestock.
- The number of animals from each species that the community is required to sell to a hunter (i.e. the Ministry of Environment and Tourism will collect the taxes from that number of kills regardless of whether the community sells the kill or not – obviously there is no incentive to not do so).
- The range of animals from each species that a community can hunt that does not fall into the above categories (i.e. animals that are not problem animals and that are not required hunts but that the community can still choose to sell). The three numbers added together give you the total initial hunt count.
Our group learning about the rock art painted by the indigenous peoples on a communal conservancy.
Perhaps the most drastic change in my thinking on conservation is the role of ethical, fair chase hunting. Obviously, a program about sustainable development, conservation and community-based natural resource management doesn’t attract the type of student that wants to go shoot a leopard, nor, I suspect, students that think favorably about those who do. Yet, if hunting is practiced and managed ethically, it can contribute to, not challenge, effective conservation.
Economically, hunting is far more lucrative than safaris. Let’s use an elephant for example. Let’s say an elephant makes a community N$50,000 (about US$3,333) from photographic safaris per year. Now let’s imagine this elephant gets quite old, approaching the typical natural age limit, and is a bull, so his role in elephant society is less important than of an old female elephant (elephants are matriarchal communities). Then you get some crazy, rich dentist from overseas to pay anywhere between N$500,000 and N$15,000,000 for that single elephant. The infrastructure necessary for the hunter is also far more environmentally friendly than the photographic safaris. Hunters don’t need roads. Hunters don’t need expensive luxury lodges that use huge amounts of energy and water. They sleep in tents. Hunters don’t use large safari buses that use more gas than Hummers, that’s part of the fair chase requirement. Hunting costs far less and makes more than ten times the money per capita.
Hunting is also more resilient. If there is a disease outbreak (like Ebola) or political turbulence, photographic safaris will end instantly, and it can take years for a reputation to be recovered. Hunters are “macho,” driven by toxic masculinity (in my opinion). They don’t care. They will continue to pay to hunt through most externalities.
I still would never go on a hunt, I have zero interest in doing so, but I think there is something to be said about the role hunting can play in conservation when it is managed ethically and responsibly.
19 Nov 2018