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by Gerhard R Damm
Readers of African Indaba will know that I am an avid and passionate hunter, and an equally passionate conservationist. I am a realist too – a epithet which cannot be attributed to some self-professed protectionists, who project their dreams of an utopian paradise on the wilderness areas of the world, with a recent particular emphasis on Africa, its elephants and rhinos. Gory photos of elephant and rhino carcasses, of animals slaughtered by criminal gangs, are indiscriminately used to raise the emotional temperature of the public. Scientific and well-proven arguments of experienced wildlife managers and researchers, who have battled their entire life on the converging frontlines wildlife, habitat and rural populations, are brushed aside by these protectionists.
These well-meaning folks have their rational judgment fogged up by a heady mix of emotions, half-truths and wishful thinking, and, in most cases lack the practical experience on the ground. They sit in their comfortable studies in megacities around the globe, well-funded, well-fed and ill informed. The hope that they listen is in vain – just as the hope that their professed love for the wild landscapes and creatures will translate into meaningful actions. They are indoctrinated, intolerant and undemocratic.
This becomes again evident by reactions on the National Geographic Blog regarding the movie “The Elephant and the Pauper: The Ivory Debacle”. This film was made by renowned filmmaker and conservationist Zig Mackintosh of Osprey Filming, both Africa-raised and Africa-based.
In this well-made and well-researched movie Zig examines whether international regulations are helping or harming conservation efforts in Africa with particular reference to Zimbabwe. What happens when there are too many elephants and their marketable value is removed? Zig draws comparisons between the preservationist style of wildlife management as practiced by Kenya and the more utilization orientated Zimbabwean and Tanzanian style. The movie also looks into the role that rural African communities play in the conservation equation and whether eco-imperialism is the real force behind the regulation that are imposed upon Africa and her inhabitants.
Every hunter-conservationist with an interest in conserving what is left of Africa and her wilderness should watch the movie on Vimeo.
The only way to save the elephant and other keystone species, and indeed Africa’s wild spaces, is to manage them. Part of that management must be the legal harvest for meat and trophies and other parts, as well as regulated international trade. The trade bans on ivory and rhino horn have proved to be no more successful than the prohibition of alcohol in the USA. Just as prohibition fostered the rise crime syndicates, the banning of sustainable use and trade fosters the rise of the international wildlife crime syndicates.
Rowan Martin, a wildlife expert from Zimbabwe said “we are more aware than they [the animal rights activists and non-use proponents] are that we no longer live in an Africa that is a pristine wilderness. It is a messy complex system where people, economics and ecology are inextricably linked. It is not helped by their wistful dreaming that a non-interventionist approach will solve the problem”.
Please click on http://vimeo.com/user17366897/review/116473289/88ae4be861 – you need to watch Zig’s film!
In December last year I met Daniel A. Pedrotti Jr. during the Boone and Crockett Club AGM in St. Petersburg, Florida. This select group of conservationists also happens to be a select group of hunters. They build on the traditions and values of President Theodore Roosevelt, America’s foremost conservationist. Dan regularly writes in the Club’s magazine on the “Ethics of Fair Chase”. We quickly realized that the problems and issues in North America and Southern Africa are quite similar – despite of some differences in the successful wildlife conservation models on both continents.
There and here the debates rage around the difference between native, and free ranging game animals (North America), and native, free or enclosed ranging game animals in ecologically functional areas (Southern Africa) on one side, and wildlife-like livestock produced on certain farms. In North America this “livestock production” includes exotic animals and deer with top-heavy unnaturally grotesque antlers. In Southern Africa, we observe an ever increasing infatuation with color phases and “horn inches”, and exotic animals are also on offer. The methods to achieve the objectives are quite similar – line breeding, hormonal treatments, artificial insemination, close confinement of breeding stock, predator elimination, booster feed formula, and so on.
In both cases there is significant discourse between those that are obsessed with antler inches, horn lengths, pelage color, close confinement breeding, and those that despise these ideas. In South Africa the debate is additionally charged with what many perceive as canned lion shooting, and others vigorously defend as “captive-bred lion hunting”.
It must be said that the producers of “frankendeer” in North America, and those in South Africa who breed colorful “frankenantelope”, enormous cattle-like Cape buffalo, and thousands of lion destined to end their life in a shooting area, are pursuing a perfectly legal and very lucrative business.
Dan Pedrotti and I are, however, adamant that it is our right to disagree with their premises and objectives. We are also within our rights to put as much distance as possible between them and us in what the public perceives as defensible ad honorable when it comes to hunting.
Dan and I don’t want them to be perceived as us! As hunters we subscribe to the tenets of Fair Chase of wild animals. We are convinced that we are part of a much larger group than those who breed “frankenspecies” or those who can afford to kill them. The vast majority of the hunting community does not value pseudo-hunts of herbivorous or carnivorous livestock on which these pseudo-hunts are based. We value great hunts, the exhilarating and breath-stopping chase, and the experiences of nature in forest, bush, mountains and deserts – much more than discussing the pedigree nuances of unnaturally maned, horned or antlered freaks which were bought and killed.
In this discourse, the breeders and shooters call us elitist, intolerant and divisive, yet the standard they use to sell their products are B&C, SCI, CIC and Rowland Ward formulae; they invariably refer to the killing of artificially bred animals as hunting and they continuously use a smoke screen of pseudo-conservation arguments. Thus they open another door for the public to misapprehend the massive differences between hunting and killing.
Kai-Uwe Denker, president of the Namibia Professional Hunting Association, expressed the same feelings at the NAPHA AGM in November last year. Kai-Uwe said “that there are too many facets – especially in trophy hunting – that totally undermine all good work … we sit with a serious dilemma and [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.” And Kai-Uwe continued saying that color phase breeding is directly contradictory to natural selection, breeding of lion to be shot by collectors has nothing to do with sustainable use nor with Fair Chase – and although financially lucrative it places a huge question mark over our true motives as hunters. Neels Geldenhuys, chief editor of African Outfitter, personally commended Kai-Uwe Denker for this NAPHA stance.
My conversation with Dan Pedrotti concluded that trophy breeders and shooters constitute a threat to the entire hunting community and to hunting way of life. The NAPHA president thinks along the same lines and so do many professional and amateur hunters in Africa (see also previous issues of African Indaba) and elsewhere. We are not intolerant because we express the most widely accepted definition of the experience-based hunt scenario within an age-old hunter-conservationist ethos. We are not elitist with our understanding that hunters are the foremost conservationists. We are not divisive if we don’t accept with open arms the money and ego which drives them.
We have the high ground – all we have to do is stand up and be counted!
Readers of African Indaba will know that I am an avid and passionate hunter, and an equally passionate conservationist. I am a realist too – a epithet which cannot be attributed to some self-professed protectionists, who project their dreams of an utopian paradise on the wilderness areas of the world, with a recent particular emphasis on Africa, its elephants and rhinos. Gory photos of elephant and rhino carcasses, of animals slaughtered by criminal gangs, are indiscriminately used to raise the emotional temperature of the public. Scientific and well-proven arguments of experienced wildlife managers and researchers, who have battled their entire life on the converging frontlines wildlife, habitat and rural populations, are brushed aside by these protectionists.
These well-meaning folks have their rational judgment fogged up by a heady mix of emotions, half-truths and wishful thinking, and, in most cases lack the practical experience on the ground. They sit in their comfortable studies in megacities around the globe, well-funded, well-fed and ill informed. The hope that they listen is in vain – just as the hope that their professed love for the wild landscapes and creatures will translate into meaningful actions. They are indoctrinated, intolerant and undemocratic.
This becomes again evident by reactions on the National Geographic Blog regarding the movie “The Elephant and the Pauper: The Ivory Debacle”. This film was made by renowned filmmaker and conservationist Zig Mackintosh of Osprey Filming, both Africa-raised and Africa-based.
In this well-made and well-researched movie Zig examines whether international regulations are helping or harming conservation efforts in Africa with particular reference to Zimbabwe. What happens when there are too many elephants and their marketable value is removed? Zig draws comparisons between the preservationist style of wildlife management as practiced by Kenya and the more utilization orientated Zimbabwean and Tanzanian style. The movie also looks into the role that rural African communities play in the conservation equation and whether eco-imperialism is the real force behind the regulation that are imposed upon Africa and her inhabitants.
Every hunter-conservationist with an interest in conserving what is left of Africa and her wilderness should watch the movie on Vimeo.
The only way to save the elephant and other keystone species, and indeed Africa’s wild spaces, is to manage them. Part of that management must be the legal harvest for meat and trophies and other parts, as well as regulated international trade. The trade bans on ivory and rhino horn have proved to be no more successful than the prohibition of alcohol in the USA. Just as prohibition fostered the rise crime syndicates, the banning of sustainable use and trade fosters the rise of the international wildlife crime syndicates.
Rowan Martin, a wildlife expert from Zimbabwe said “we are more aware than they [the animal rights activists and non-use proponents] are that we no longer live in an Africa that is a pristine wilderness. It is a messy complex system where people, economics and ecology are inextricably linked. It is not helped by their wistful dreaming that a non-interventionist approach will solve the problem”.
Please click on http://vimeo.com/user17366897/review/116473289/88ae4be861 – you need to watch Zig’s film!
In December last year I met Daniel A. Pedrotti Jr. during the Boone and Crockett Club AGM in St. Petersburg, Florida. This select group of conservationists also happens to be a select group of hunters. They build on the traditions and values of President Theodore Roosevelt, America’s foremost conservationist. Dan regularly writes in the Club’s magazine on the “Ethics of Fair Chase”. We quickly realized that the problems and issues in North America and Southern Africa are quite similar – despite of some differences in the successful wildlife conservation models on both continents.
There and here the debates rage around the difference between native, and free ranging game animals (North America), and native, free or enclosed ranging game animals in ecologically functional areas (Southern Africa) on one side, and wildlife-like livestock produced on certain farms. In North America this “livestock production” includes exotic animals and deer with top-heavy unnaturally grotesque antlers. In Southern Africa, we observe an ever increasing infatuation with color phases and “horn inches”, and exotic animals are also on offer. The methods to achieve the objectives are quite similar – line breeding, hormonal treatments, artificial insemination, close confinement of breeding stock, predator elimination, booster feed formula, and so on.
In both cases there is significant discourse between those that are obsessed with antler inches, horn lengths, pelage color, close confinement breeding, and those that despise these ideas. In South Africa the debate is additionally charged with what many perceive as canned lion shooting, and others vigorously defend as “captive-bred lion hunting”.
It must be said that the producers of “frankendeer” in North America, and those in South Africa who breed colorful “frankenantelope”, enormous cattle-like Cape buffalo, and thousands of lion destined to end their life in a shooting area, are pursuing a perfectly legal and very lucrative business.
Dan Pedrotti and I are, however, adamant that it is our right to disagree with their premises and objectives. We are also within our rights to put as much distance as possible between them and us in what the public perceives as defensible ad honorable when it comes to hunting.
Dan and I don’t want them to be perceived as us! As hunters we subscribe to the tenets of Fair Chase of wild animals. We are convinced that we are part of a much larger group than those who breed “frankenspecies” or those who can afford to kill them. The vast majority of the hunting community does not value pseudo-hunts of herbivorous or carnivorous livestock on which these pseudo-hunts are based. We value great hunts, the exhilarating and breath-stopping chase, and the experiences of nature in forest, bush, mountains and deserts – much more than discussing the pedigree nuances of unnaturally maned, horned or antlered freaks which were bought and killed.
In this discourse, the breeders and shooters call us elitist, intolerant and divisive, yet the standard they use to sell their products are B&C, SCI, CIC and Rowland Ward formulae; they invariably refer to the killing of artificially bred animals as hunting and they continuously use a smoke screen of pseudo-conservation arguments. Thus they open another door for the public to misapprehend the massive differences between hunting and killing.
Kai-Uwe Denker, president of the Namibia Professional Hunting Association, expressed the same feelings at the NAPHA AGM in November last year. Kai-Uwe said “that there are too many facets – especially in trophy hunting – that totally undermine all good work … we sit with a serious dilemma and [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.” And Kai-Uwe continued saying that color phase breeding is directly contradictory to natural selection, breeding of lion to be shot by collectors has nothing to do with sustainable use nor with Fair Chase – and although financially lucrative it places a huge question mark over our true motives as hunters. Neels Geldenhuys, chief editor of African Outfitter, personally commended Kai-Uwe Denker for this NAPHA stance.
My conversation with Dan Pedrotti concluded that trophy breeders and shooters constitute a threat to the entire hunting community and to hunting way of life. The NAPHA president thinks along the same lines and so do many professional and amateur hunters in Africa (see also previous issues of African Indaba) and elsewhere. We are not intolerant because we express the most widely accepted definition of the experience-based hunt scenario within an age-old hunter-conservationist ethos. We are not elitist with our understanding that hunters are the foremost conservationists. We are not divisive if we don’t accept with open arms the money and ego which drives them.
We have the high ground – all we have to do is stand up and be counted!
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