Outrage over Safari is Misguided
One of the claims made by McGowan is that the animals Mr Crossberg hunted are endangered, but this is simply not the case. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists both the African elephant and giraffe as vulnerable (i.e. not endangered) in the IUCN Red List. It is illegal for hunters to target species listed as endangered*. People who kill endangered species are poachers, not hunters. This is an important distinction to make, as poaching is considered one of the biggest threats to wildlife in the world today (not just Africa). By contrast, legal and regulated hunting is not viewed as a threat, and many scientists and wildlife biologists would attest that it can be a useful tool for wildlife conservation.
The Premier went on to state that he believes these animals need to be protected, and that he doesn’t understand why someone would go out of their way to kill them and that such activity is only detrimental to the continued survival of those species. While the popular notion is that hunting can only damage wildlife populations, extensive studies and data analysis has shown that, when done correctly and with a robust regulatory framework in place, hunting can contribute significantly to conservation and anti-poaching efforts. For example, the population of White Rhinos in South Africa has increased dramatically ever since limited, strongly regulated hunting of them was introduced in 1968. In Zimbabwe, the Bubye Valley Conservancy was converted from a cattle ranch in the 1990s to a wildlife reserve sustained by income generated through limited hunting. The 323,000-hectare conservancy currently boasts a population of approximately 500 lions, 700 African elephants, 5,000 cape buffalo, 82 white rhinos and 211 black rhinos.
Legal, regulated hunting has also been proven to give rural communities incentive to protect and live with animals that they would otherwise see no benefit to coexisting with, such as lions and elephants. Legal hunting practices also provide rural African communities with much-needed meat deliveries, which brings food security and disincentivises bushmeat poaching. For example, a study in Zambia showed that rural communities located within game management areas/GMAs (i.e. hunting areas) received an average of more than 6,000 kg per GMA of game meat annually from hunting operators.
When hunting bans are put in place due to pressure from anti-hunting groups, it can often be detrimental to not only wildlife but also the communities that depend on income from hunting tourism. When Botswana imposed a hunting ban in 2014 due to pressure from international activist groups, it caused a dramatic reduction in tourism benefits to local communities; these benefits included income, employment opportunities, social services, scholarships and meat deliveries. The ban resulted in an increase in Human-wildlife conflicts as well as an increase in poaching incidents. This is because the people who have to live with these wild animals were left with no incentive to protect or tolerate them.
It should be noted here that hunting and photo-tourism are not interchangeable, as the latter requires scenic areas where wildlife is particularly abundant, which is not representative of Africa’s wild areas as a whole. Photo-tourism areas also require significant infrastructure to support photo-tourists, which most wilderness areas in Africa lack. Furthermore, the economic benefits of photo-tourism are often not shared with local people in rural African regions. According to a study published in 2017, only 27% of photo-tourism revenue is retained within Botswana while the remaining 73% goes to international organisations. This is in contrast to regulated hunting, where 75% of funds flowed directly to the Botswanan people. Photo-tourism also fails to directly address the problems of wildlife overpopulation and food security in rural African communities.
When it comes to conservation, there is no room for emotional rhetoric. If wild animals and wild places are to survive, we need to take a scientific evidence-based approach to management.
*There are some very limited exceptions to this. Where it can be demonstrated that tightly controlled hunting of a few individuals will benefit the species as a whole, legal hunting can take place. An example of this is the black rhino, which is seeing population increases in countries where strongly controlled legal hunting is contributing significant amounts of money to conservation efforts.
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