Can Rhinos Profit From Trophy Hunting?

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Can Rhinos Profit From Trophy Hunting?
by Ann and Steve Toon (Project: African Rhino | Author Archives)

Recent reports that a group called the Dallas Safari Club is to auction off the chance for a trophy hunter to shoot a black rhino in Namibia, with proceeds going to support conservation of the endangered species, has sparked furious condemnation from some quarters, and equally forthright support from others.

Despite the furore, the recyling of profits from big game hunting back into conservation is not a new practice in Africa. It's viewed by its supporters, many of them leading conservationists, as a sustainable use, just like conventional safari tourism, of the local wildlife resource on a continent where conservation budgets are seriously squeezed. But how does a highly controversial approach to conserving endangered wildlife like this work in practice?

Namibia has had a policy of allowing limited trophy hunting for black rhino for some years and it's certainly not been universally popular. On our recent visit to the country earlier this year we were able to ask Pierre du Preez, national rhino co-ordinator for the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), just where the money from trophy hunting goes. What's the justification for his country's approach to the 'consumptive utilisation' of rhinos?

He explained that in 1997 the Namibian government established the Game Products Trust Fund, to channel revenue from wildlife utilisation into conservation. 'Money from state ivory sales, rhino trophy hunting, tourism and hunting concessions, and 25 per cent of gate fees at national parks goes straight into the Fund,' he told us. 'It's not something wishy washy, it's a proven system. The GPTF was enacted by government at the time of ivory sales, to prove to the world that this money will definitely go back into conservation, not into the black hole of Government. It's definitely worked.'

The Fund makes grants to a range of organisations, including conservancies, wildlife charities, and the MET, for use in wildlife conservation, with a particular emphasis on improving the relationship between people and wildlife.

Du Preez says the Fund is an important contributor to the Ministry's rhino-protection work. 'We get funding from individuals and organisations like Save the Rhino International and US Fish and Wildlife. But we do get a significant amount of money from government, for equipment, staff salaries, helicopter time. The Trust has a board, and we apply to it for funding. For example, we are developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system for Etosha and other parks, with assistance from WWF/Google. The system we've now commissioned is bought through the GPTF.'

'On trophies, we are only allowed to shoot five rhino, all identified animals, all bulls that are past their prime,' he says. 'It's a significant income, income that flows back into rhino conservation, into organisations like Save The Rhino Trust. The GPTF is about 70-80 per cent money accrued out of utilisation, [so-called] 'blood money'.'

Du Preez argues that sustainable utilisation of wildlife has been key to building Namibia's reputation as a country of conservation. 'Just look at the changed attitudes over the last ten years, the poverty alleviation because of wildlife, and the increase of wildlife in all areas,' he says. 'Look at what utilisation has done for making areas available for wildlife. If we look at the rhino custodian programme, that programme has more rhino now than certain range states in Africa. 90 per cent of those animals are on hunting farms, not reserves. All those people are into utilisation of the wildlife. In a big sense that's where we can sit down with communities and talk to them.'

Namibia's black rhino are state-owned, but about 50 per cent are outside of national parks, many of these on private land, cared for under the country's custodianship programme. 'MET do the biological management, captures, immobilisations, but the day to day safety of animals, fencing, water, whatever the animals need on the farm, that's the full responsibility of the custodian. So a lot of the management is taken off us. They don't have any consumptive use of the animals, only non-consumptive,' explains du Preez.

It's proven a successful model: 'In 1966 we had about 60 or so animals left in the country. We had a dip in 1989 when we had serious poaching, but in the past 20 years, we've lost no more than ten or twelve animals to poaching. Now we're standing at over 1,700 animals. The population growth over the time period, about 5 per cent per annum, is quite realistic for Namibia we're very arid.'

'Overall the population is doing very well. Our management plan says we must try for 5 per cent, and we do achieve it. Over the past couple of years it's been 7 per cent, but we've had very good rains. The north west population, the biggest outside of any protected area, is doing extremely well. We'll start getting problems as soon as we enter a drought again, but that's expected.'

For Pierre du Preez controlled trophy hunting of a small number of non-productive bulls is a worthwhile price to pay for conservation funding. With ever-increased spending on anti-poaching measures inevitable, it seems unlikely that the Namibian government will ban trophy hunting any time soon.
 
STOP PRESS: 350,000 Reasons to Kill a Black Rhino

STOP PRESS: 350,000 Reasons to Kill a Black Rhino
by Ivo Vegter 13th January 2014 (South Africa)

The Daily Maverick

Editor's Note: African Indaba brought already several opinion pieces of Ivo Vegter, a columnist of The Daily Maverick in the past. In view of the high resonance the Dallas Safari Club Auction created around the world, we decided share this article with our readers immediately, although the January issue of African Indaba was already finalized by the time Ivo Vegter's article appeared on January 13th, 2014. Make sure that you click on the links provided in Vegter's article in order to get a complete view of the issues at stake. At the time of writing this note there were already over 150 comments on the Daily Maverick webpage most likely there are hundreds more by the time you get this in your inbox. Make sure to access the Daily Maverick webpage to read these comments you will be surprised!

Here is Vegter's article:

A black rhino in Namibia is about to get shot. Legally, of course. The permit was auctioned off for a not insignificant $350,000. The public outcry including death threats was reserved for an unsympathetic target: an anonymous American hunter. Equally predictably, the outcry is entirely wrong.

Nobody batted an eyelid in 2012 when Namibia instituted a policy of permitting five black rhino hunts per year, in the hope of deriving some revenue from animals that are, for conservation reasons, surplus to requirements.

Last week, however, it was reported that an unidentified Texan hunter bid $350,000 for one of the permits, and immediately, the hysteria flared up. Ben Carter, director of the Dallas Safari Club which hosted the permit auction, told Agence France-Presse, a wire service, that his staff and their family members had received "more than a dozen ... death threats" and reported the matter to the police.

One of my correspondents blamed it all on former US president Ronald Reagan's cuts to the education and mental health budgets, suggesting that Texans are both stupid and insane.

Meanwhile, Namibian wildlife authorities have defended the sale, saying that the funds are to be used for anti-poaching and other conservation measures, and that the targeted animals are individuals that in any case would have to be culled to ensure the health and survival of the rhino population in that country.

I've had a number of occasions to argue in favour of commercial game hunting, farming rhino, free trade in rhino horn, and hunting lions. Not because I like hunting, you understand. I'm no gung-ho sinews-in-the-teeth hunter. I'm not even a sophisticated high-tech ninja assassin.

However, rationally speaking, it is clear that animals that have economic value to their owners get protected by those owners. Even if they're owned by a government, the ability to earn a larger sustainable revenue from a thriving wildlife population than mere photographic tourism can provide is a powerful incentive to conserve and manage valuable and rare species.

If this is true for some species, why not for all of them? If this is true at some population levels, why not also for critically endangered species?

The era of the colonial big game hunter demonstrated the consequences of unowned wildlife. The destruction of once-thriving populations of large game was a clear case that an asset that is everyone's responsibility gets exploited by everybody, and protected by nobody. The same happened in many post-colonial African countries, as it did in Asia and South America. Uncontrolled poaching drove several species to extinction, and left many others decimated and reeling. Ocean fisheries are another case, in which property rights are notoriously hard to establish and enforce, leading to acute threats to species survival that are hard to combat.

Campaigns to halt species decline, and in particular the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), have largely been ineffective. As I wrote two years ago, such prohibition campaigns are notorious, for not succeeding at best. They sometimes even make matters worse by artificially raising the price of a commodity, thus making it profitable for crime syndicates to establish black market trade.

I made the case in the context of rhinos, and the Property and Environment Research Centre (PERC), an independent lobby group that advocates private solutions to conservation problems, makes a similar case in the context of tiger conservation.

Ironically, the few species that CITES officials cite as success stories are, in fact, cases where private property rights and legal farming or hunting saved species from the brink of extinction. Among them are crocodiles, turtles and perhaps the most eloquent example, the South American vicu?. These creatures, prized for their fine wool, are once again thriving, thanks to a programme legalising trade in vicu? fleece, and extending property rights to local communities.

Of course, neither private property rights nor legal trade in animal products are panaceae. They do not remove the threat of poaching altogether, as more recent academic research on vicu? shows. Stock theft remains a problem even with common farm animals such as sheep and cattle.

However, by providing a legal alternative to black-market products, placing downward pressure on prices, and raising revenue for farms and conservation agencies, legal trade makes the threat of poaching considerably less acute and easier to combat. Poaching happens with sheep and cattle, but it is not a financial crisis for farmers, nor an existential problem for the species.

There are a few misconceptions that need addressing when discussing legal hunting, or legal trade in the products of endangered species.

The first is that there is a single right way to manage any given species. If there is, everyone might have an opinion, but few likely know the right solution. The management of game ought to be up to the private owners and individual conservation agencies. They, like the Namibian conservation authorities in the case of the black rhino under their care, are best placed to judge which animals need to be culled for conservation reasons, and which additional animals can safely be taken without harming the remaining population.

The same is true for the question of whether animals are more productive when their products are harvested by non-lethal means, such as shearing vicu? or dehorning rhino, or by killing animals for their products, like we do with many animals for leather and meat. This is a decision best made by farmers. This is a local, practical decision, informed by business and conservation considerations. Not all farmers will do things the same way. Not all farmers will even make the right choice. But by distributing the management responsibility among multiple private farmers, rather than establishing a single centralised policy, one reduces the impact of mistakes. If some farmers fail, or act irresponsibly, it will harm only their own businesses, and the animals on their property, rather than the wider population.

Another factor that inflames public sentiment is money. The irony is that while high prices paid for hunting permits tend to whip up resentment, it would be far worse if conservation authorities or game farmers couldn't get high prices for their animals.

A similar dynamic is at play when environmental groups and newspapers trumpet prices for bluefin tuna. Last year, a record price of $1.76 million was paid for the first fish of the season in Japan. According to Andrew Revkin at the New York Times, environmentalists claimed that this "masks a real and pressing problem", namely declining fish stocks as if it would make sense for an abundant fish species to fetch such a price. This year, the ceremonial sale earned just five percent of what was paid last year, "despite signs that the species is in serious decline." Can't win. Does a low price or a high price mask these signs?

The price mechanism is a fascinating thing. When a commodity is scarce, relative to demand, prices rise. This has the double effect of incentivising higher production, if possible, and rationing consumption, if necessary. Conversely, if scarcity declines, so will prices, and more people will have their demand for the commodity met at reasonable cost.

So, a high price for a hunting permit (or a tuna, or a walnut side table) is to be expected if the species in question is under pressure. That means they have high revenue potential, while demand will be limited, both of which serve to protect the resource. And should the price decline over time, it will be an even better sign, because it means that demand is being sustainably supplied by producers.

The notion that economic value trumps altruism as an incentive to breed and protect rare game is borne out by hunting ranches in the very same state of Texas where this black rhino hunting permit was sold. Although Reagan made Texans crazy and stupid, ranchers in the Lone Star State have brought several species back from the brink of extinction. This happened neither by accident, nor by the sort of green idealism espoused by self-righteous urban elites that condescend to call people who aren't like them stupid.

Three antelope that are extinct in the wild in their native Africa, the dama gazelle, addax and scimitar-horned oryx, thrive in Texas. According to the state's Exotic Wildlife Association, as quoted by the Houston Chronicle, the populations grew from two addax, nine dama gazelle, and 32 oryx in the 1970s, to thriving herds of 5,000 addax, 800 dama and 11,000 oryx today.

Only, they're under threat again. This time, environmental groups such as Friends of Animals and the Humane Society of the United States the same groups that led the outcry over the black rhino hunt managed to get the species listed under the US Endangered Species Act. Ranchers, interviewed for 60 Minutes on CBS, have declared that their revenue potential is the only thing that keeps them alive, and a hunting ban would ensure their extinction.

Priscilla Feral, the CEO of Friends of Animals, retorted that she'd rather see them extinct than accept legal hunting. She may well get her wish, but last I checked, we frown on people who actively try to wipe out endangered species.

So-called environmentalists quite openly say they're willing to let endangered animals go extinct to advance their radical green agenda. They are supported by a howling mob wielding torches and pitchforks, coming after the children of people who disagree with them. Evidently, their ideology is a smokescreen for pathological, psychopathical misanthropy.

Is that an ideology worth saving from lunatics who scream blue murder? Perhaps the rest of us economists and conservationists alike should have a rational discussion about how economic value is more likely to ensure the survival of endangered species than any measures we've tried to date.

In this sense, $350,000 is a very good reason to allow someone to shoot a black rhino.

This animal would have had to be culled anyway, and the revenue from the hunt is explicitly earmarked for anti-poaching and conservation efforts. But even if neither of these were true, and the profit went straight into a greedy rancher's back pocket, the price paid for a trophy hunt is a splendid incentive to sustain healthy populations of rare and endangered animals. Especially when hunting bans, nationalisation, emotional appeals and most other tricks we've tried have failed to save endangered species. DM

Ivo Vegter is a columnist and the author of Extreme Environment, a book on environmental exaggeration and how it harms emerging economies. He approaches issues from the perspective of individual liberty and free markets. He grew up in the deep south of Johannesburg, and learnt his politics reading the Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad at Wits University during the early years of the country's transition to democracy. He recently left the city for the lower cost of living of Knysna, where he continues to write about everything under the sun. He is always right.
 

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