Keynote Address by Mr Kai-Uwe Denker NAPHA President at NAPHA AGM 2014

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Keynote Address by Mr Kai-Uwe Denker NAPHA President

Madam of Ceremonies
Honourable Minister Herunga
Invited Guests
Dear Members
Ladies and Gentlemen – all protocol observed

During the last two weeks, when we were finally approaching our AGM, I repeatedly was haunted by a nightmare, during which I found myself standing in front of the audience here – as they say with my mouth full of teeth -, without having managed to prepare my presentation for the occasion. Because so many issues - administrative and otherwise - kept pouring in and heaping up that I felt unable to attend and concentrate on this presentation.
Well, eventually I managed to hopefully have more in my mouth and on my mind than “a mouth full of teeth”.

The question however could be asked: what, amidst ten thousand issues and huge administrative burdens, in times of internet and immediate global connections, are the priority issues of an association like NAPHA and how does one manage to not be choked by administrative burdens and still be able to make meaningful contributions to the day-to-day challenges and, most importantly, long term objectives of an association like ours?
What are the core issues and how does one manage to reach them within a limited timeframe and with limited resources? How can one find a balance between short-term needs and long-term responsibilities, without losing sight of the bigger picture amidst the daily struggle for survival for each and all of us?

Yes, how does one survive within the climate of short-term opportunism, limited - and at times unrealistic – timeframes, pressured by members and non-members alike, pressured by individuals and other stakeholders alike?
To cope with this, when I took over as President, I restructured the standard agenda for our monthly Executive Committee Meetings in such a way that we always first of all attend to and discuss “Strategic Issues”.

Amongst these strategic issues there always is the matter “The future of hunting”.
After all we are a professional hunting association.
However on the first meeting of the year 2013 the following issue was identified as top priority: “To make another very important step forward in NAPHA’s social responsibility programme by implementing training of such nature that communal conservancies (and for that matter any other previously disadvantaged Namibians) are empowered to run their own trophy hunting operation.”
For the long-term survival of trophy hunting in Africa it seems important that the full benefits of trophy hunting reach the rural people on the ground where our wildlife occurs.
In thus coming back to my initial question “what are the top priorities of an association like NAPHA and how does an association like ours manage to reach them amidst ten-thousand daily issues without being choked in the process?”, I think that NAPHA has always played and continues to play a very important role in conservation in this country and the bigger social context surrounding it.

Before trying to attend to the actual matters, I, however, would like to mention an important requirement for the success in any undertaking: responsible actions and reasonable expectations by all of us.
Because Rome was not built in a day and as we say in German “Gut Ding will Weile haben”. Good outcome requires some time.
We have always taken the recurring appeal by Government representatives on our AGMs, to facilitate and speed up the inauguration of previously disadvantaged Namibians in responsible positions of the hunting industry, very serious, we are thankful for openness and we feel that we fully live up to our responsibilities in this regard.
NAPHA has over the last ten years successfully trained around 300 previously disadvantaged Namibians as fully qualified hunting guides.

This has to be seen in the correct perspective, because after all this association has a total of somewhat over 300 ordinary members, that means without supportive or sponsoring members.
At times we feel that it is just not fair to time and again criticize us for being “a white only industry”.
In Namibia we have “freedom of Association”.
The reasons why many qualified hunting guides do not become members of this association is mainly financially motivated. Quite a few hunting professionals of this country – white and non-white – are not members of this Association, because the easiest way to save some money is to first of all save the yearly membership fees of NAPHA, but still benefit from the positive impact NAPHA makes with a huge effort towards hunting and conservation in this country.

Yes, I wish to categorically point out: we are totally committed, we make a huge effort, often to the bad detriment of our private responsibilities. We feel committed to conservation in this country, because it is our home that we love.
We know that trust also needs time to be built. But we really feel hurt by the unfair accusations we faced recently.
And to those hunting professionals who carry the wellbeing of their profession at heart and who are committed to ethical, fair chase hunting, yet are not members of this association we appeal: become members, don’t stay outside, don’t evade the membership fee and hide behind some unfair accusations.
This association has to live from something, at the end of each month we have to pay the bills arising from all our efforts to contribute to nature conservation and all the surrounding responsibilities of a young nation. After all, we all are Namibians.

Yesterday the first theoretical part of the Hunting Operator Course for Communal Conservancy members at Eagle Rock Hunting Academy, initiated two years ago, came to an end. The second course will follow early next year and during the hunting season NAPHA Members are available for mentoring the candidates.
With this we have reached the ultimate aim of NAPHA’s education efforts started ten years ago, namely empowering previously disadvantaged Namibians to reap the full benefits possible in the hunting industry.
We are proud of this. Rome was not built in a day.
The second priority issue on our strategic agenda is more complex and much more difficult to solve in long-term perspective: the future of hunting.

Most responsible people around the world seem to agree that the protection of our natural environment is of utmost importance for the wellbeing of mankind.
But relatively few still realise that nature is based on the interaction of hunter and hunted and that humanity also is part of nature.
Life in the wild is always a correlation of hunter and prey. Everything in nature is based on food chains and natural cycles, on the system of ‘eat and be eaten’.

Putting it simple, all living beings fit into the following pattern: There are ‘energy producers’ (these are roots, grasses, shrubs and trees) and there are those that ‘store’ energy, namely the animals, subdivided in herbivores and carnivores. And lastly there are ‘decomposers’, organisms like bacteria which feed on waste products. Through them the energy is returned to the soil, from where the plants regenerate it for the eternal cycle of life.
No part of this cycle is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. An antelope eats grass, a lion eats the antelope, vultures and hyena eat the lion, bacteria decompose the remains of the antelope, the lion and the vulture – and of man, let’s not forget that – and the cycle starts all over again with the growth of the plants.

Man with all its attempts to intervene in these natural laws has only managed to wreak havoc. The result is the devastating destruction of nature lamented by nature lovers around the globe.
Since primordial times, before he started to destroy his environment, man was a hunter and part of this system. As such he was neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’.
It is obvious that the clock cannot be turned back.
But before we can start to discuss the issue of ‘nature conservation’ or the ‘pros and cons’ of hunting, the question that needs to be answered has to be:
Do we still need or want nature?

It seems that most people definitely feel the need to preserve our natural environment.
So, if the answer to the question ”do we still need nature” is “yes”, then we need to accept nature as it is. Then an antelope cannot be termed ‘good’ and a lion cannot be termed ‘bad’.
Man, in contrast to a lion of course has a conscience. But man is very well part of nature and should know and respect natures laws and regularities.
And if in principle it is not wrong that a lion kills an antelope, then, within the scope of the natural context, it cannot be reprehensible that a human being engages in hunting activities – as long as he does so in a sustainable manner and adheres to ethical principles.
Within the natural context a hunter cannot be termed ‘bad’ and neither can a vegetarian be termed ‘good’. The general public will have to admit this.

All this is relatively easy to explain and I think that by now all people really interested in conservation issues have accepted that sustainable use practises could make a very valuable contribution to nature conservation.
Where thus, is the problem?
Why are we not able to get the message across?
Why does hunting face so much international criticism, why are petitions started to stop it?
The answer is easy.

Deep down humanity has an incorruptible sense for right and wrong. And unfortunately there are too many facets – especially in trophy hunting – that totally undermine all good work that was done to explain natural connotations and ourselves.
We sit with a serious dilemma and like with many other things, money is the driving power behind this dilemma. For monetary reasons – not at all for ideological reasons –we hunters drift away from the rest of the conservation community.That ultimately has to be fatal.

There is a movement right now amongst hunters to get away from the term “Hunting Industry” and to call ourselves the “Hunting Community”, because we have realized that something is wrong. Rightly so.
But do we merely try to cover some of our more questionable doings behind a new name or do we really see the opportunity that our time holds for us and get back to where we belong: To be an important and integral part of the international conservation community?
In an attempt to justify ourselves, we are inclined to tighten the screw of our financial contributions ever more and by all means. In the end this is a hopeless endeavour.

In times of ever increasing technological possibilities we ultimately anyhow will not be able to compete with intensive forms of land use like intensive agriculture, let alone with mining or others.
But in the process we totally lose credibility.
The selective, artificial breeding of game animals for the hunting industry keeps luring on the horizon like an irresistible financial temptation. The artificial breeding of colour variants, like for example of white springbok, yellow blesbok and the simultaneous elimination of cheetah in an attempt to protect these recessive colour variants, have nothing to do with conservation.

The line-breeding of golden oryx by artificial elimination of the dominant normal colour variation, is directly contradictory to natural selection. What are we busy with? Do we just use conservation as a pretext?
The artificial breeding of lion to be shot by trophy collectors has nothing to do with sustainable use, nor with fair chase hunting. It may be financially lucrative, but it places a huge question mark over our true motives as hunters.
NAPHA has taken very clear stances on these issues. NAPHA also always has lived up to the recurring appeal by government representatives and other institutions to keep the industry clean and see to it that ethical principles are adhered to. But we cannot do this alone. We need the support of government and the general public. It is detrimental not only to NAPHA, but much more to the image of our country and its conservation efforts, if members, which we try to discipline, just leave our association and try to discredit us from the outside on false and purely opportunistic grounds.

Conservation in our times front and foremost has to be about suitable living space, about habitat for wild animals.
Elephant and lion specialist groups lament the decline of these animals and use numbers from around the century to underline their concern. Yes true, a hundred years ago there were five times the elephant numbers, three times the lion numbers than survive today. But it is not hunting that has reduced their numbers. Their habitat has gone due to human expansion.
We hunters can contribute to the protection of habitats. After all that is what we hunters love – this unspoiled African wilderness, beautiful beyond words in its contrast of stark

landscapes, bizarre trees and magnificent animals, heat-shimmering and thorny at times and incredibly soft at others.
But we have to fall in with worldwide conservation concerns. We can be forerunners in these. Because we understand the laws of hunter and hunted, the food chains and the everlasting laws of live. We have to contribute to and explain ecologically sound ecosystems.

We hunters should create a new incentive in international conservation efforts. The success of conservation efforts should be measured by institutions like IUCN and others via a habitat specialist group and not so much by species specialist groups. Efforts should be measured and rewarded on the grounds of square kilometres of properly zoned, ecologically sound natural habitat with the intact spectrum of species, from mouse and mouse bird via mongoose and woodpecker to lion and elephant. Only that can stop the decline of elephants and lion and ultimately all wildlife outside of national parks. Not the unrealistic comparison of numbers already compressed in overstocked fragments of remaining nature with numbers of bygone times.

I have questioned the ever increasing tightening of the financial screw in an attempt to justify ourselves. It is not my intention to question the financial aspects of trophy hunting.
Quite contrary.
Via the sustainable use of natural resources utterly important incentives for habitat protection are created. But hunting should be a neat, clean, ethically orientated, ecologically sound supplement to general conservation efforts and hunters a respected section of the conservation community - and the tourism industry; why not, there is nothing wrong with an industry.

And we should not overdue the sustainable use principle. We should fall in with the general conservation community in protecting intact ecosystems inclusive of cape vultures and black rhinoceros irrespective of whether they can be utilised or not.
Yes sure, sustainable use creates powerful incentives, but there are non-hunter conservationists who are prepared to spend money and effort to safe black rhino irrespective of sustainable use principles for aesthetic reasons alone. Do we hunters have to be the odd ones out in lamenting that without the sustainable use principle we are not prepared to carry the risk, cost and effort to protect them?
After all what we really love is the experience of intact habitats, of being out in unspoiled nature.

The sight of a delicate sunbird hovering full of joy over the first flowers of September, of a snorting rhino pondering by while we just enjoy a stalk. The roar of a lion while we sit at the campfire at night or the ‘whouup’ of a hyena.
An international trophy hunter is nothing than a human being who wishes to experience unspoiled nature and be part of that. And of course we also enjoy bringing home prey.
Hunting can be the purest form of highly paid eco-tourism. Whether that is an industry or something else, as long it falls in with the just conservation concerns of the general public, as long as we are part of that conservation community and not the odd ones out.

Thus in closing I wish to state that these at times somewhat critical words are nothing than an attempt of a Namibian who loves this country with the bottom of his soul and who is proud of the achievements of his association – NAPHA – over several decades now and who really is grateful of our Government’s support, patience and achievements. For the understanding and the open door of MET and NTB.
It is not so easy to bring across with words what is on your heart.
After all I am part of a white minority. Yes, how can I claim to be an African? I cannot deny being of European origin.

But the world has moved closer together.
At the soccer world Championship this year there was an excellent defender amidst the German team who contributed greatly towards the final victory of his team. Jerome Boateng is of African origin. He played a hugely important role in the sturdy defence of the German national soccer team - his national soccer team - to eventually become world champion.

We all can and should benefit from each other.
Thus in coming back to my initial question: “What, amidst ten thousand issues and huge administrative burdens are the priority issues of an association like NAPHA?”, I wish to state:
We try hard and with honest idealism to live up to our social responsibilities and the bigger picture of conservation on this magnificent continent, Africa.
A continent not always easily understood by the hectic and unrest of the European mind, but which, in its combination of ancient wisdom and youthful hope and power is unequalled.

A continent unequalled in the grandeur of its diverse natural settings, descending from the lofty highlands of Ethiopia, following the great rift valley across that lion country Tanzania, to find the proud sable antelope amidst the beautiful Miombo Woodlands of Zimbabwe, until we reach the silent wide open spaces of Namibia with the one animal of them all: the greater kudu, elusive and grandiose beyond words amidst our stark surroundings.
Our country with still abundant intact eco-systems. It is our intention to try and make a difference protecting these to the advantage of the people of this country and its wildlife. And for reasons of their aesthetic value alone.
Because in itself they are food for our souls and visitors to contrastingly beautiful Namibia. Our country.

Thank you for listening.
 

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