Can legalised-hunting help conservation?

[Matias]

Quote:By Emmanuel Koro

If you want to be the number one enemy in rural African communities, tell them to stop using their land for cattle production. Cattle are considered a status symbol in Africa. A family’s wealth or status is generally measured by the size of the herd of cattle it owns.
Despite this, Namibia’s Anabeb Conservancy residents switched from using their land for cattle production in favour of wildlife trophy hunting. Why did they do this?

The benefits that the Anabeb Conservancy’s 200 households have been receiving from hunting over the years led to a decision in 2019 to completely abandon a centuries-old African culture of using land to support cattle. Today, wildlife roams freely where herds of cattle used to graze. It is a rare cultural transformation brought about by the extraordinary and life-changing wildlife hunting benefits.

For Anabeb Conservancy members, wildlife hunting brings more money and makes more economic and conservation sense than cattle. Cattle need more water and grazing land than wildlife. The wildlife land-use option also reduces human-wildlife conflict, as there are no wildlife revenge-killings for attacks on their cattle.

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Water made available to remote communities because of hunting

“If you sell one cow you get US$125(N$2000) while a kudu fetches US$935 (N$15 000) or more depending on size,” said Anabeb Conservancy Chairman, Ovehi Kasaona, in an interview this week. “Therefore, our Conservancy decided last year to sell all our cattle and use the land for wildlife hunting and tourism lodges that we have built using hunting revenue.”

The hunting benefits to Namibia’s Anabeb Conservancy include the provision of water “within a five-metre distance for each household.” This has drastically reduced the long distances women and children would walk every day to fetch water in the dry landscape.

These impressive advancements due to hunting revenue have resulted in a significant improvement to people’s livelihoods in the Anabeb Conservancy, including better educational, health and sanitation services. The Conservancy recently used some of this revenue to buy an ambulance for the local clinic, making it easier for pregnant women and other residents from this community to receive emergency medical care. This, in turn, helps to prevent needless loss of lives.

Full access link: Namibia – Why rural communities choose wildlife hunting over cattle Reply