There is a world somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are those living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild animals will be heard and respected. The forum offers a glimpse into an unknown world as well as a room with a view on the present and the future. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join.
I'll just say this, whenever a hunter says they hunt Lions, leopards, and other predators to help with their conservation, don't believe them. I've been around hunters my whole life, and I'm gonna tell you all right now that the real motivation for trophy hunters to kill Lions and leopards is to eliminate a competitor for "their game". They could care less if they go extinct, so don't believe everything hunters tell you.
Hunting is only a sadic pleasure which the man gives to himself and which have desastrous consequences.
By killing either an elephant which have big tusks, or a buffalos with big horns, either a big-horned-rhino, or a big-maned-lion and so on, the man kills a dominant male. He's all wrong, the predator in comparaison kills the weakest in order the most healthy can live...
Nothing can seriously justify the hunting made by the human being.
Hunting is a trickery that allows the hunter to claim himself ecologist... Loud joke !
Hunting is a war because the oligarchies of the humanity don't know anything else to do in order to prosper. Hunting is a war against nature because we don't know any other bound with what is different from us.
Hunting is one of the many forms of the man's bankruptcy on Earth.
I know I'm badly repeating myself but... We're a dreadful mistake of nature. And in the end, errors are going to disappear.
I should also say that the tiger population in Nepal has increased, and there isn't any trophy hunting involved in that at all. So much for the practice being an important conservation tool.
"Trophy hunting keeps the poachers out."
Me: No sir, wildlife soldiers are how you keep the poachers out!
South Africa – how Timbavati funds itself with hunting and tourism
Autor: Keith Somerville [b]Timbavati (South Africa) Sustainability and the Funding of the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve November 17, 2018[/b]
Managing a Private Nature Reserve
In 1956, a group of conservation minded landowners formed the Timbavati Association to restore and protect the landscape of a large wilderness area. Since then protected areas in the Kruger Lowveld have grown dramatically. With the dropping of fences in 1993 between the Timbavati, neighbouring private nature reserves, and the Kruger National Park, a large, thriving, unfenced protected space was created that now forms part of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA).
Today, the Timbavati conservation ideal persists, albeit under rapidly changing and unpredictable circumstances. The complexities of managing a large private nature reserve increase every day. A good example of this is the relentless challenge we face in dealing with rhino poaching. In our reserve alone, the costs for security and anti-poaching have escalated by a staggering 900% in the last 6 years, taking up 63% of our annual operating budget. And while we fight against organised crime and illegal wildlife trade, other serious challenges need to be faced – like integrating the Greater Kruger wilderness and surrounding communities in ways that are sustainable and that reduce the risk of protected area fragmentation.
Whilst private nature reserves are vital pieces of the Greater Kruger landscape puzzle, it is not commonly known that these private reserves receive no government funding. All funds have to be generated by the reserves themselves – funds to cover the costs of anti-poaching, salaries of wardens, ecologists and other staff, conducting expensive aerial censuses to monitor animal populations, monitoring vegetation conditions, controlling alien plants and maintaining roads, fire breaks and fences to name a few.
Finding a sustainable funding model (as a non-profit organisation), that does not compromise a reserves’ commitment to minimising ecological footprint and maximising conservation goals, is perhaps the ultimate test faced by many private nature reserves in the Greater Kruger today.
Sustainable Utilisation as a Funding Model
The Timbavati relies on income generated from two forms of sustainable utilisation – photographic tourism and trophy hunting. The latter has a much lighter landscape footprint and yields far more revenue per capita for the reserve than the former. To address imbalance, reserve management embarked on an analysis of the reserve’s financial model in 2016, revealing that the conservation levies paid by the ± 24 000 photographic tourists who visited the reserve that year was less than a third of the income earned from the 46 hunters visiting over the same period.
*This image is copyright of its original author
Consequently, in January 2018 the TPNR (Timbavati Private Nature Reserve) increased the conservation fee levied on photographic tourists to R328 per person per night. The practical result was increased revenue from photographic tourism without a need to increase bednight numbers, and hence human footprint. Our income budget has become better balanced in terms of the revenue that each sector brings to the reserve.
In fact, with a lower number of photographic tourists and a lower number of hunters visiting Timbavati in 2018, the revenues to the reserve have increased, supporting the Timbavati’s commitment to minimising ecological footprint whilst covering operational costs.
*This image is copyright of its original author
Photographic tourism and trophy hunting rely on sound reserve management, enabling a healthy ecosystem, which supports stable plant and animal populations. The Timbavati monitors wildlife populations closely through annual aerial censuses, and conducts annual routine vegetation assessments to determine veld condition. The reserve is fortunate to have accurate data spanning more than two decades, and our data shows that the total animal population in Timbavati continues to grow. This includes elephant, whose numbers are declining in other areas around Africa.
*This image is copyright of its original author
*This image is copyright of its original author
The Bigger Picture
The Timbavati has always stayed true to the principle that human footprint in the form of infrastructure development and visitor numbers is in conflict with sustainable management of wilderness areas. To support the low-density principles that Timbavati promotes, natural resources can and must be used sustainably. Sustainable utilisation includes all our activities that use nature as a resource, including photographic safari tourism and trophy hunting, our annual impala culling that is done to ease grazing pressure on the ecosystem, water resource use, and the harvesting of wood and sand from the natural landscape.
Both photographic tourism and hunting are compatible funding practices and we call on all our Greater Kruger partners to work together to govern these activities with integrity and careful oversight. We call on everyone with a stake in conservation to focus on the real, big-picture issues, such as benefitting local businesses within the wildlife economy, finding innovative ways to help local communities derive income from wildlife activities, the growing relevance of wilderness spaces and protected areas in the lives of people living in and around the Greater Kruger, and the collective pressure of bringing illegal practices in wilderness areas to a halt.
We also call on the media and the public at large to take a landscape-level view when appraising the management practices of private reserves. Our relevance in the collective landscape leads to integration of wilderness spaces to the benefit of all animals and plants within the bigger system. We should take hands, put aside differences, and work together to prevent fragmentation of an integrated and sustainable Greater Kruger.
Our 2019 Funding Model
With photographic tourism and hunting being two major components in the funding model of our reserve, our proposed approach for 2019 is as follows:
From 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019, the Conservation Levies for photographic tourism will be R368 per person per night. This increase is in line with the increases applied by the Kruger National Park for its entrance fees, and will provide the necessary revenue for the reserve while keeping our tourism footprint at ecologically sustainable levels. The projected contribution to the Timbavati’s income budget from Conservation Levies for 2019 will be just over 50% with estimated photographic visitor numbers of just under 21 000 for the year.
In addition to this, the tables below show the proposed hunting quotas for 2019 that Timbavati is submitting for approval by the authorities. Some important points are highlighted below with regards to the figures in these tables.
*This image is copyright of its original author
The table above shows the animals allocated to be sold as trophy hunts to raise revenue for the reserve. Revenue earned from two of the buffalo bulls, will be donated to our local neighbouring communities. In this way, closer links are forged with the reserve’s neighbours who share the Greater Kruger landscape.
*This image is copyright of its original author
Those animals allocated for non-commercial hunts, as shown above in Table 2, do not raise revenue for the reserve. In the case of impala, hunting is used for population control.
*This image is copyright of its original author
The 1 600 impala to be hunted, shown in Table 3 above, form part of the reserve’s management programme deemed necessary to reduce the impact impala have on the availability of grazing and hence on that available to other herbivores.
The culling programme represents over 96% of the reserve’s hunting quota request and includes animals to be removed by Timbavati management (1 600 animals – Table 3), as well as those to be removed by landowners within the reserve (390 animals – Table 2). Culling programmes are costly and time-consuming, but are essential for the continued health of the reserve, and culling decisions are informed by annual vegetation condition studies.
The above figures represent around 28 trophy hunters visiting the Timbavati during 2019, with less than 0.5% of the Timbavati’s total animal population allocated for trophy hunts. In 2019, the budgeted income from hunting will represent approximately 30% of the reserve’s total income.
Protocols and Best Practice in the Greater Kruger
In 2018, the protocols that govern sustainable hunting in the open system were revised and standardised. As a member of the Greater Kruger, Timbavati participated in this process, together with other private reserves, industry representatives, Kruger National Park, Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA), Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism (LEDET), and various specialists. This revised protocol covers all provincial and national legislation, as well as TOPS (Threatened or Protected Species) requirements, and places more responsibility on the hunting outfitter and professional hunter, with a penalty system in place to fine non-compliance. The protocol further dictates that should the outfitter or professional hunter routinely transgress, then s/he will be banned from the reserves in addition to being fined.
Not a single hunt takes place without the scrutiny of census data and other ecological specialist studies. Our reserve managers, representatives from other reserves in the open system, MTPA, LEDET, SANParks and other scientific experts, attend pre-off-take meetings. Our hunting application is scrutinised and conservation authorities consider ecological sustainability, the contribution that hunting will make to the running-costs of our reserve, and importantly, how the hunting revenue will support conservation in the open system, beyond the boundaries of just our own reserve.
In parallel with the revised hunting protocol, an initiative is well underway to implement a “Responsible Tourism Best Practice Toolkit for the Greater Kruger”. This toolkit, the development of which is a joint effort between Kruger National Park, the various private reserves adjoining the national park, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), and tourism stakeholders, will lay down minimum standards and rules for tourism operators to adhere to within the Greater Kruger open system. The toolkit will also set aspirational goals of best practice, with guidelines on how to achieve these. This initiative recognises the need to regulate, monitor and control photographic tourism activities within the Greater Kruger, to ensure that these practices are sustainable, in much the same way as hunting activities are governed by protocols to ensure their sustainability.
Timbavati is already implementing the new Greater Kruger Hunting Protocol and is actively participating on the steering committee for the development of the Responsible Tourism Best Practice Toolkit for the Greater Kruger. We are proud to be part of these multi-sector initiatives to ensure that both photographic tourism and hunting are sustainable, ethical and beneficial to a wide range of stakeholders.
What’s Next for the Timbavati? Making History.
Very soon, Timbavati will be a signatory to the historic Greater Kruger/GLTFCA Cooperative Agreement (to be signed between reserves in the open system) to ensure coherent and transparent governance of all aspects of protected area management. This is not just focussed on the regulation of hunting and responsible tourism practices, but also includes critical themes such as safety and security management and social investment imperatives.
We remain sensitive to local conservation challenges and global trends and continue to look at ways to improve and diversify our revenue model. As a citizen of the Greater Kruger, Timbavati is committed to the big picture where multiple land-uses co-exist and common ethical norms regulate how we protect, utilise and benefit from nature.
So killing impala to basically control the population. I hope these idiots realize they're in Africa, home to Lions, hyenas, wild dogs, leopards, and Cheetahs that do the job just fine on their own.
The information that comes to us is vital to building a thought on any subject. With regard to hunting trophy there are two road models: one with single traffic and one with forked traffic - both lead to the same place. Inside of bifurcated traffic there are two streams of thought, one notoriously linked to animal rights and welfare and the other linked to those who have "skin in the game". In the construction of the points of view, when we started "conservation studies" with Internet searches, we are always faced first with the Westernized and directed visions of the entities that are little focused on the earth, , or good projects that are aimed at the conservation of certain species in huge areas with good tourist visitation. The vast majority of NGO's that focus on wildlife rescue do not buy a hectare of land or any animal for conservation purposes, surviving from philanthropic donations. There is no point that wildlife is, in itself, self-sustaining. No animal rights NGO wants to be connected to sustainable practices. For example, the management of pastures and landscapes in which the slaughter of some species is necessary, since its funding will be directed to another NGO that does not advocate such practices. They are connected to the currents of social media opinions. When I see ivory and horns being burned in marketing events, whose message remains the same for the last 30 years: "We do not tolerate hunting and we will fight this crime to the end" is a sign that many elements feed on the permanence of this situation . The issue of funding the hundreds of NGO's (their mantras against the consumptive use of wildlife and their aggressive marketing in social networks) is rendering a dubious service to wildlife conservation, especially when it relies on doubtful opinions. If you want to train a more realistic view, search for articles by conservation practitioners, those who step on the ground, develop projects, invest time, money and dreams, and have lodges, camps, or work directly in national parks and protected areas public or private areas). From this knowledge, you can actually make your choices of what works and what does not, what it serves, and what it does not do for management and conservation of species and habitats. Beware of arguments that condemn the trophy hunting but do not propose any other solid economic model of wildlife use.
In a BLOG, I answered in this way to the questions that the trophy hunting does not serve the conservation, it can be useful to you.
Analyzing the impact of trophy hunting in Africa from the point of view of animal welfare is counter-productive. The narrow and distorted visions of this conservation tool that allows the maintenance of habitat and wildlife on thousands of hectares results lack of knowledge of the facts. Everything is a matter of funding (who will pay and how will you pay for the conservation of those millions of hectares that are outside of national parks / protected areas). The day these visions discover how to replace the funding of this activity with another "ethically appropriately" the Columbus egg will appear. For now... This group that made the article should know how to replace trophy hunting with another conservation economics project (NGO's, philanthropy and all other means of financing that are far from the reality of African communities is doomed to failure). For African communities trophy hunting is not a problem. The absence of money and other benefits is what they are. Westernized views that rely on issues of ethics and well-being do a great disservice to the yearnings of those who have "skin in the game."
Ethics and animal welfare are praiseworthy and deserve an appropriate place in welfare policies. Connecting them or using them to promote conservation policies (whether public or private) would further reduce funding capacity. Imposing the moral issue on practical conservation measures for species and ecosystems is not the best path to sustainability. The land issue is very complex, and regardless of the geographical location of any community adjacent to protected areas, the interest is only one: to have income and access to goods and services that promote qualitative improvements in life.
Even famous NGO's like African Parks are underfunded in their projects. Each protected area needs a variable value ($$$) for each km² of area to be effectively conserved. Kruger has a cumulative deficit of somewhere around $ 100 million, all in spite of more than two million annual visitors and fees received from dozens of adjacent private reserves. I know it is not pleasant to see smiling people carrying rifles beside a dead animal, but as long as the money does not show up and effective public policies are not implemented by local governments that currently do not have any conservation priority, these regulated hunters provide a continuous income and useful for the maintenance of wilderness areas, especially those that are far from the infrastructure needed for large-scale tourist visitation. Bad with them, much worse without them. The goal of conservation is to save populations rather than individuals.
For reading, I present these four links. There are many more sources of information, including association hunting and hunting, and I did not need much time to find them, follow their instinct and just stop when you're sure you have elements to form a solid opinion.
RhinoAlive.com is an awareness campaign in support of legal trade in rhino horn. It is salutary to see that conservationists globally recognized for their work on earth, are together in search of a viable and responsible solution for the survival of the rhinos.
There is a some misunderstanding about what I meant.
My reference was to thread #28, though that articles clearly shows by increasing the visiting fee of the photogenic tourist, Reserve generated better revenue but there are articles in all fields where data is manipulated to disguise people and in the same way, people can come up with articles that may show trophy hunting helps animal population revive or thrive.
Another point to all readers - please also share the alternate solutions to generate revenue.
From reading all the feedbacks it is clear trophy hunting is not the solution but what are the counter solutions else trophy hunting will keep thriving if there ain't any other solutions.
Opinion post by Dereck Joubert I’ve been asked to respond to the following remarks that came up in a discussion following the broadcast of our latest Documentary, Birth of a Pride: The remarks: “He is exaggerating the extent to which hunting had anything to do with the near absence of lions and the extent to which his taking over the area contributed to the lions coming back again. The whole of northern Botswana has very unstable rainfall (like Namibia) – if it is dry (or flooded) in an area for a couple of years the herbivores move out and the predators go with them. When it rains (or the floods are lower) they all come back again – nothing at all to do with human interventions. They were certainly involved in moving SA rhinos to the Okavango, an intervention which allowed Great Plains and Wilderness to market themselves as big 5 destinations. They are not fake conservationists, but their approach to hunting and other forms of ultilisation is driven by a very narrow focus on the bottom line. Joubert is on record as saying that he would give a job to every hunting employee post ban, in reality he gave no jobs to anyone and his company did not take over any of the vacated hunting concessions.” My response is detailed but is as follows: Actually we lived in the area permanently through the hunting era unlike so many of the old ‘Hunters Africa’ hunters and friends of mine, who probably spent three or four months in the bush each year, and would probably not be considered ‘reliable witnesses’, in particular they were doing the shooting. There will always be different opinions of how to USE the land and wildlife and the South African policy is pro-hunting, while the Kenyan, Uganda, and Botswana one is of no hunting. So the differences will always be there, and I have learned that trying to convince someone who has firm views one way or another is probably not going to be successful, but I can speak to some of the details you mention, just for accuracy for those who may be interested. The demise of wildlife in what was once called Area 6 and now NG 16 is very clear. I wrote a paper on this for government in 1993 and lion researchers – Drs Winterbachs – similarly presented the results of zero recovery from excessive lion hunting in 2004 at the Lion Symposium. So the science is irrefutable. I personally saw hunters shoot the last 6 of 11 tsessebe, with sable antelope being shot for ration meat and fed to hunters’ dogs at home in Kasane. Elephants were wild and attacked Beverly and me nine times during that era as a result of being persecuted or wounded by hunters. Once I may have been one voice in dozens at these symposiums, who felt that big cats were suffering from over-hunting. Today there are very few scientists that disagree. There are parallels to the Climate Change debate. People can simply deny it over and over – but it doesn’t go away.
With regard to the Selinda ecosystem, rainfall and trophy hunter behaviour To suggest that an area in an open ecosystem like northern Botswana can collapse because of a drought is incorrect, especially along a permanent river system like the Linyanti! If anything it should be even more concentrated with wildlife as pools dry up in the interior and the Spillway, but with water remaining in the river. Droughts happen all the time and unless the wildlife is dying up against fences in closed systems, they simply follow the water and adapt most of the time. Some local resident species don’t move, but our study showed that even resident species like impala moved when they had to. In fact, this dry cycle you talk of is exactly when most of the hunting took place, when the tectonic shift caused the drying up of the Savute channel, starting in 1981. As that happened, large numbers of wildlife flocked to the rivers – and were shot. I have 15 years of detailed logs of hunters shooting madly from vehicles – at night, on baits – almost in a frenzy. And today, many of those same hunters tell me it was a crazy time of abundance and excess. Lions were shot down to such low numbers that male cubs started breeding with their mothers and sisters, and were then shot. New sub adult male cubs mated with their sisters, mothers and grandmothers just because hunters had shot out every breeding male in the region and beyond. Again, I documented this, as well as the rash of deformities the subsequent cubs were born with. Then it collapsed. So the notion that when it floods again, ’they all come back’ is a wonderful idea but not realistic if you are shooting them all, year in and year out. By chance, when we took the concession over, the rains brought water into the Selinda Spillway again. We have annual game counts and official censuses on that recovery process. But there are still have species here that were very highly desired by hunters, and once occurred in good numbers but that have simply not recovered. In over 136,000 ha we have fewer than 400 zebras, and wildebeest are half that number. It took years for hyena numbers to recover, and they usually do really well in dry conditions. But as I recall, one hunter who had just slaughtered nine of them in one moment around a den (1997) answered me when I asked how he decided which to shoot, males or females (only males were legal even then): “Oh, hyenas are both male and female, they are hermaphrodites!”. This was 1997 I see in my notes – not 1897!! And this was by a licensed professional hunter. There was no science behind what to kill, how many and when to stop. It was the Wild West, and these declines are just too easy to blame on a dry cycle. The recovery, as it is, is also not to be accredited to a wet cycle, but on sane wildlife management. At the time, by the way, wildlife advisors to Chief Tawana came to me to tell me what used to happen 100 years ago, and even then there was basic science on what not to shoot and kill, as hunters accounted for their kills, and if the chief noticed fewer of a certain species, or the stories were about how much harder it was to find something, he would place a ban on either that species or on all hunting. Those representatives asked me to help take their call for a ban to government. I won’t go into the detail of what I saw and recorded in this post, but I can say that if there is a solid record of what happened in that area at all over a 30-year period of time, it lies in my notes, footage and photographs in my office, not in the rhetoric in the bars of Maun. That humans could behave like that was a disgrace, to be frank. Dragging a squealing and gutted duiker across the ground to a tree where it was wired up (still alive) to attract a leopard to shoot after dark (also illegal), diesel used to pour into warthog holes where a wounded leopard had run, and then set on fire; over 200 rounds of gunfire shot into a palm island where they thought a male lion was holed up, but ended up shooting his pride and eight cubs, and then later, setting the palm alight to “smoke the sucker out” – are all testaments to the atrocities. The male was wounded so couldn’t escape and burned to death, but the hunters logged it up to an accident and went on to shoot his brother. I saw all these things, and heard the hunters tell the stories with no remorse afterwards around the campfires. Well known local professional hunters were nicknamed ‘Matches xyz’ and ‘Fireman xyz’ for burning the swamp to attract the rare sitatunga to kill, amongst other unsavoury hunts.
Buffalo herds, science tells us, are often indicator species and when you see them in their ideal numbers of around 250 in a herd, there is a balance. Larger herds in this habitat indicates high predator numbers (so their behavioural response is to band together as a defence). But very low herd sizes indicate massive human persecution (where the better defence is to disband and hide in the thickets). Selinda, between 1993 and 2010 had average herd sizes of 15-20. We have just taken over an ex-hunting area in Zimbabwe where the hunting was very heavy, and the herds are small there as well. In Duba Plains or places like Kidepo in Uganda those herd sizes are well over 1,000 – not because of habitat or drought, but because of high lion numbers. Anyone who denies that hunting, and in particular heavy or overhunting has no effect, is not being logical or totally truthful with themselves. On the rhinos, we don’t actually market rhinos in Great Plains Conservation and with regards to this area, Selinda, we actually refused to move rhinos here, partly because it may be seen as us providing some commercial advantage to ourselves, which would probably be fine given that with our partners we raised the full $5m and brought them in, but I was always determined to “give” them as a gift to Botswana and the people of Botswana. If Wilderness Safaris do indeed market rhinos, it is not from the batch of nearly 100 we have donated to the nation of Botswana, but something they may have done themselves and nothing to do with me or marketed or condoned by me. Besides that, frankly I don’t think there are many people who would book a ticket to come to Africa to see rhino. Studies show rhinos to be quite low down the list of requested species (in Kruger), and below giraffe, for example. Booking a ticket to come and shoot a rhino – as is possible in South Africa or Namibia, is another thing however, and studies also show that the more endangered a species the more desirable it becomes as a hunting ‘trophy’. If the price to shoot an endangered or threatened species is higher than the ‘yet to be threatened’ species, then my mind questions the conservation ethics of those hunters.
With regards to employment and other benefits Selinda was a hunting area when I purchased it, so it came with its financial records, and I was able to analyse the different benefits to the two opposing management styles. It turns out that, where 12 semi-permanent staff were hired before, we now hire 140. (On the day we took over, 100% of our staff were therefore ex-hunting staff so in fact that alone refutes the statement that we didn’t hire any ex-hunting staff in itself.) Those (all ex-hunting staff,) under the previous management, were hired for five months of the year and let go every year, so no 5, 10 or 15 year gratuities were ever paid to them. In addition very few advanced their careers. The most senior was a tracker earning about $1.60 a day. Today we have those same cooks and trackers as managers, as guides, as PR and HR staff in our offices, earning more than ten to twenty times that. And more relevant to me, is that many have left us and moved into other sectors, in banks and businesses, and started their own companies. Airline tickets, curios, food supplies, fuel transport, etc. etc. all developed as a result of this conversion from hunting to photographic tourism. In converting Selinda from a marginal area for hunting to one of the most productive wildlife areas in Africa, it has generated jobs and businesses around it for local communities. In fact, the net benefit (in a paper I did about six years ago), to the nation is 2,500% better than it is for trophy hunting! Jobs, taxes, skills, costs are all included, and we do that by inviting fewer than 50 people a day into the area, so the environmental footprint is minimal, and we do it without killing an animal. An analysis of benefit to communities is interesting because, by way of example, our guests have left behind around $1M in donations over the past few years, and a lot of that goes to providing communities with solar lanterns and a range of projects, We are about to start the Great Plains Academy to prepare some of the forgotten community members for higher education. This was not going on before. By the way, around 15% of our current staff are ex-hunting employees and actually finding staff who were once hunting workers is getting even harder as time passes, as they are either absorbed into the tourism market or retire. We are constantly looking for staff to hire. Obviously we have to train them and they need to be willing to be trained, but we are growing and will probably see the need for another 50 people to join us in the short term (18 months). We hire about 300 people in Botswana alone and over 660 across the group. According to the UN benefit proportion of breadwinners:dependants that means we put food in the mouths of over 4,000 each day. And we do it without shooting sable or elephants as ration meat. So the claim of us not hiring a single person is factually incorrect. With regard to former hunting concessions The allocation and management of retired hunting concessions has been a disappointment to all of us, and some areas have actually been gazetted as part of the National Park scheme, so they actually aren’t available for me or others to take over, even if we wanted to. But some of these concessions came up for tender two years ago, and we were the only company to apply to take over all eleven of these old hunting concessions. Unfortunately, that process was stopped for some internal government reason (possibly to do a survey on what could be incorporated into National Parks). We can hardly be blamed for not taking over an area that was not awarded at all, let alone to us. Finally, The debate on whether to hunt or not is not really relevant anymore as we stare down the barrel of 8 billion people on Earth and over 1 billion head of livestock in East Africa alone – and massive disenfranchisement across Africa, and within our communities. This is the real threat to wildlife. The answer, in my humble opinion, is in education, creating real benefits (like the Selinda model does), and in being respectful to those people who need us to drive the increase in their basic wealth and to fight poverty and corruption. The Okavango and the few wild places like it in the world deserve complete protection. The people who look after it deserve our respect. Dumping a rotting elephant carcass at their villages from time to time is not respectful or of real benefit to the poor. It may feed people today, but it doesn’t lift them up to that place where they can feed themselves. Together we need to tackle the far bigger problems with knowledge and passion and the deeper insight that local communities bring from generations of living side by side with nature, something we in the Western mindset are losing daily. Kind regards,
Dereck
Opinion post by Dereck Joubert I’ve been asked to respond to the following remarks that came up in a discussion following the broadcast of our latest Documentary, Birth of a Pride: The remarks: “He is exaggerating the extent to which hunting had anything to do with the near absence of lions and the extent to which his taking over the area contributed to the lions coming back again. The whole of northern Botswana has very unstable rainfall (like Namibia) – if it is dry (or flooded) in an area for a couple of years the herbivores move out and the predators go with them. When it rains (or the floods are lower) they all come back again – nothing at all to do with human interventions. They were certainly involved in moving SA rhinos to the Okavango, an intervention which allowed Great Plains and Wilderness to market themselves as big 5 destinations. They are not fake conservationists, but their approach to hunting and other forms of ultilisation is driven by a very narrow focus on the bottom line. Joubert is on record as saying that he would give a job to every hunting employee post ban, in reality he gave no jobs to anyone and his company did not take over any of the vacated hunting concessions.” My response is detailed but is as follows: Actually we lived in the area permanently through the hunting era unlike so many of the old ‘Hunters Africa’ hunters and friends of mine, who probably spent three or four months in the bush each year, and would probably not be considered ‘reliable witnesses’, in particular they were doing the shooting. There will always be different opinions of how to USE the land and wildlife and the South African policy is pro-hunting, while the Kenyan, Uganda, and Botswana one is of no hunting. So the differences will always be there, and I have learned that trying to convince someone who has firm views one way or another is probably not going to be successful, but I can speak to some of the details you mention, just for accuracy for those who may be interested. The demise of wildlife in what was once called Area 6 and now NG 16 is very clear. I wrote a paper on this for government in 1993 and lion researchers – Drs Winterbachs – similarly presented the results of zero recovery from excessive lion hunting in 2004 at the Lion Symposium. So the science is irrefutable. I personally saw hunters shoot the last 6 of 11 tsessebe, with sable antelope being shot for ration meat and fed to hunters’ dogs at home in Kasane. Elephants were wild and attacked Beverly and me nine times during that era as a result of being persecuted or wounded by hunters. Once I may have been one voice in dozens at these symposiums, who felt that big cats were suffering from over-hunting. Today there are very few scientists that disagree. There are parallels to the Climate Change debate. People can simply deny it over and over – but it doesn’t go away.
With regard to the Selinda ecosystem, rainfall and trophy hunter behaviour To suggest that an area in an open ecosystem like northern Botswana can collapse because of a drought is incorrect, especially along a permanent river system like the Linyanti! If anything it should be even more concentrated with wildlife as pools dry up in the interior and the Spillway, but with water remaining in the river. Droughts happen all the time and unless the wildlife is dying up against fences in closed systems, they simply follow the water and adapt most of the time. Some local resident species don’t move, but our study showed that even resident species like impala moved when they had to. In fact, this dry cycle you talk of is exactly when most of the hunting took place, when the tectonic shift caused the drying up of the Savute channel, starting in 1981. As that happened, large numbers of wildlife flocked to the rivers – and were shot. I have 15 years of detailed logs of hunters shooting madly from vehicles – at night, on baits – almost in a frenzy. And today, many of those same hunters tell me it was a crazy time of abundance and excess. Lions were shot down to such low numbers that male cubs started breeding with their mothers and sisters, and were then shot. New sub adult male cubs mated with their sisters, mothers and grandmothers just because hunters had shot out every breeding male in the region and beyond. Again, I documented this, as well as the rash of deformities the subsequent cubs were born with. Then it collapsed. So the notion that when it floods again, ’they all come back’ is a wonderful idea but not realistic if you are shooting them all, year in and year out. By chance, when we took the concession over, the rains brought water into the Selinda Spillway again. We have annual game counts and official censuses on that recovery process. But there are still have species here that were very highly desired by hunters, and once occurred in good numbers but that have simply not recovered. In over 136,000 ha we have fewer than 400 zebras, and wildebeest are half that number. It took years for hyena numbers to recover, and they usually do really well in dry conditions. But as I recall, one hunter who had just slaughtered nine of them in one moment around a den (1997) answered me when I asked how he decided which to shoot, males or females (only males were legal even then): “Oh, hyenas are both male and female, they are hermaphrodites!”. This was 1997 I see in my notes – not 1897!! And this was by a licensed professional hunter. There was no science behind what to kill, how many and when to stop. It was the Wild West, and these declines are just too easy to blame on a dry cycle. The recovery, as it is, is also not to be accredited to a wet cycle, but on sane wildlife management. At the time, by the way, wildlife advisors to Chief Tawana came to me to tell me what used to happen 100 years ago, and even then there was basic science on what not to shoot and kill, as hunters accounted for their kills, and if the chief noticed fewer of a certain species, or the stories were about how much harder it was to find something, he would place a ban on either that species or on all hunting. Those representatives asked me to help take their call for a ban to government. I won’t go into the detail of what I saw and recorded in this post, but I can say that if there is a solid record of what happened in that area at all over a 30-year period of time, it lies in my notes, footage and photographs in my office, not in the rhetoric in the bars of Maun. That humans could behave like that was a disgrace, to be frank. Dragging a squealing and gutted duiker across the ground to a tree where it was wired up (still alive) to attract a leopard to shoot after dark (also illegal), diesel used to pour into warthog holes where a wounded leopard had run, and then set on fire; over 200 rounds of gunfire shot into a palm island where they thought a male lion was holed up, but ended up shooting his pride and eight cubs, and then later, setting the palm alight to “smoke the sucker out” – are all testaments to the atrocities. The male was wounded so couldn’t escape and burned to death, but the hunters logged it up to an accident and went on to shoot his brother. I saw all these things, and heard the hunters tell the stories with no remorse afterwards around the campfires. Well known local professional hunters were nicknamed ‘Matches xyz’ and ‘Fireman xyz’ for burning the swamp to attract the rare sitatunga to kill, amongst other unsavoury hunts.
Buffalo herds, science tells us, are often indicator species and when you see them in their ideal numbers of around 250 in a herd, there is a balance. Larger herds in this habitat indicates high predator numbers (so their behavioural response is to band together as a defence). But very low herd sizes indicate massive human persecution (where the better defence is to disband and hide in the thickets). Selinda, between 1993 and 2010 had average herd sizes of 15-20. We have just taken over an ex-hunting area in Zimbabwe where the hunting was very heavy, and the herds are small there as well. In Duba Plains or places like Kidepo in Uganda those herd sizes are well over 1,000 – not because of habitat or drought, but because of high lion numbers. Anyone who denies that hunting, and in particular heavy or overhunting has no effect, is not being logical or totally truthful with themselves. On the rhinos, we don’t actually market rhinos in Great Plains Conservation and with regards to this area, Selinda, we actually refused to move rhinos here, partly because it may be seen as us providing some commercial advantage to ourselves, which would probably be fine given that with our partners we raised the full $5m and brought them in, but I was always determined to “give” them as a gift to Botswana and the people of Botswana. If Wilderness Safaris do indeed market rhinos, it is not from the batch of nearly 100 we have donated to the nation of Botswana, but something they may have done themselves and nothing to do with me or marketed or condoned by me. Besides that, frankly I don’t think there are many people who would book a ticket to come to Africa to see rhino. Studies show rhinos to be quite low down the list of requested species (in Kruger), and below giraffe, for example. Booking a ticket to come and shoot a rhino – as is possible in South Africa or Namibia, is another thing however, and studies also show that the more endangered a species the more desirable it becomes as a hunting ‘trophy’. If the price to shoot an endangered or threatened species is higher than the ‘yet to be threatened’ species, then my mind questions the conservation ethics of those hunters.
With regards to employment and other benefits Selinda was a hunting area when I purchased it, so it came with its financial records, and I was able to analyse the different benefits to the two opposing management styles. It turns out that, where 12 semi-permanent staff were hired before, we now hire 140. (On the day we took over, 100% of our staff were therefore ex-hunting staff so in fact that alone refutes the statement that we didn’t hire any ex-hunting staff in itself.) Those (all ex-hunting staff,) under the previous management, were hired for five months of the year and let go every year, so no 5, 10 or 15 year gratuities were ever paid to them. In addition very few advanced their careers. The most senior was a tracker earning about $1.60 a day. Today we have those same cooks and trackers as managers, as guides, as PR and HR staff in our offices, earning more than ten to twenty times that. And more relevant to me, is that many have left us and moved into other sectors, in banks and businesses, and started their own companies. Airline tickets, curios, food supplies, fuel transport, etc. etc. all developed as a result of this conversion from hunting to photographic tourism. In converting Selinda from a marginal area for hunting to one of the most productive wildlife areas in Africa, it has generated jobs and businesses around it for local communities. In fact, the net benefit (in a paper I did about six years ago), to the nation is 2,500% better than it is for trophy hunting! Jobs, taxes, skills, costs are all included, and we do that by inviting fewer than 50 people a day into the area, so the environmental footprint is minimal, and we do it without killing an animal. An analysis of benefit to communities is interesting because, by way of example, our guests have left behind around $1M in donations over the past few years, and a lot of that goes to providing communities with solar lanterns and a range of projects, We are about to start the Great Plains Academy to prepare some of the forgotten community members for higher education. This was not going on before. By the way, around 15% of our current staff are ex-hunting employees and actually finding staff who were once hunting workers is getting even harder as time passes, as they are either absorbed into the tourism market or retire. We are constantly looking for staff to hire. Obviously we have to train them and they need to be willing to be trained, but we are growing and will probably see the need for another 50 people to join us in the short term (18 months). We hire about 300 people in Botswana alone and over 660 across the group. According to the UN benefit proportion of breadwinners:dependants that means we put food in the mouths of over 4,000 each day. And we do it without shooting sable or elephants as ration meat. So the claim of us not hiring a single person is factually incorrect. With regard to former hunting concessions The allocation and management of retired hunting concessions has been a disappointment to all of us, and some areas have actually been gazetted as part of the National Park scheme, so they actually aren’t available for me or others to take over, even if we wanted to. But some of these concessions came up for tender two years ago, and we were the only company to apply to take over all eleven of these old hunting concessions. Unfortunately, that process was stopped for some internal government reason (possibly to do a survey on what could be incorporated into National Parks). We can hardly be blamed for not taking over an area that was not awarded at all, let alone to us. Finally, The debate on whether to hunt or not is not really relevant anymore as we stare down the barrel of 8 billion people on Earth and over 1 billion head of livestock in East Africa alone – and massive disenfranchisement across Africa, and within our communities. This is the real threat to wildlife. The answer, in my humble opinion, is in education, creating real benefits (like the Selinda model does), and in being respectful to those people who need us to drive the increase in their basic wealth and to fight poverty and corruption. The Okavango and the few wild places like it in the world deserve complete protection. The people who look after it deserve our respect. Dumping a rotting elephant carcass at their villages from time to time is not respectful or of real benefit to the poor. It may feed people today, but it doesn’t lift them up to that place where they can feed themselves. Together we need to tackle the far bigger problems with knowledge and passion and the deeper insight that local communities bring from generations of living side by side with nature, something we in the Western mindset are losing daily. Kind regards,
Dereck
I do actually have a story related to this trophy hunting.
I was on a trip to Forth Worth, Texas with my FFA group. On the way, we made some stops, one of them was Nashville, Tennesee. The group I was with went into a store called "The Boot Barn" where they had many cowboy boots made out of many animals like fish, ostriches, stingrays, antelope, etc. The lady who worked at the store showed us some boots in the collection, now my Ag teacher talked about elephant skin boots being sold there, so to see if that was true, I asked the lady if they had any and sure enough, they did. I held that boot in my hands, and I just thought about the elephants, and then I put the boot down. I just thought to myself,
"How could you people do this!?"
I then heard the lady say this
"They are endangered, but we need to control the population."
I then thought "They're endangered! They aren't out of control!"
I saw boots when I first came into the store, after now knowing elephant skin boots were actually real, I asked the lady if those boots were real, and I swear, she said they were actual leopard skin boots. She and I talked about the situation, she said she didn't support what they were doing, I did believe her, but while I was talking with my folks about this, my mom suggested she was probably just saying that to keep me from yelling at her. After my group left the store, I just couldn't stop thinking about the elephants, and I did almost tear up. I'll also say this, killing elephants is like killing people, as these animals are known to mourn this dead, basically they're like humans mentally, only they're herbivores. Those who hunt elephants, I just have one word to describe them: Monsters.
(02-08-2019, 06:07 AM)smedz Wrote: I do actually have a story related to this trophy hunting.
I was on a trip to Forth Worth, Texas with my FFA group. On the way, we made some stops, one of them was Nashville, Tennesee. The group I was with went into a store called "The Boot Barn" where they had many cowboy boots made out of many animals like fish, ostriches, stingrays, antelope, etc. The lady who worked at the store showed us some boots in the collection, now my Ag teacher talked about elephant skin boots being sold there, so to see if that was true, I asked the lady if they had any and sure enough, they did. I held that boot in my hands, and I just thought about the elephants, and then I put the boot down. I just thought to myself,
"How could you people do this!?"
I then heard the lady say this
"They are endangered, but we need to control the population."
I then thought "They're endangered! They aren't out of control!"
I saw boots when I first came into the store, after now knowing elephant skin boots were actually real, I asked the lady if those boots were real, and I swear, she said they were actual leopard skin boots. She and I talked about the situation, she said she didn't support what they were doing, I did believe her, but while I was talking with my folks about this, my mom suggested she was probably just saying that to keep me from yelling at her. After my group left the store, I just couldn't stop thinking about the elephants, and I did almost tear up. I'll also say this, killing elephants is like killing people, as these animals are known to mourn this dead, basically they're like humans mentally, only they're herbivores. Those who hunt elephants, I just have one word to describe them: Monsters.
If someone has lived with cows & Buffaloes (horses included), one would say the same - these animals mourn, love and care (I would say all animals do).
I'll just share a small experience of mine, when I was a kid (7-8 years old, around 24 years back), we used to have 2-3 buffaloes for milk in native village (my grandparents stayed there).
Now I used to visit the place only once a year, and would play with buffaloes. One of these buffaloes was very aggressive and wouldn't allow anyone in vicinity if person was unknown or visited regularly but wasn't a family member, but whenever we (me & my brother) visited the place, her response was same - no sign of aggression at all. I would go and shake her horns, try to milk her and do all sorts of stuff kids would do, sit on her, pull by her ears etc - she won't mind any it, just like others but others were calm but this was known for her fierce nature.
Certainly Buffaloes knew and remembered us, whether we would be visit the place only for 2-3 weeks a year.
Now coming to the subject:
How absurd is this statement made by hunter - "Finally, I can think of no other way to stop this beautiful tiny antelope becoming extinct in a country where commercial bushmeat poaching is a way of life."
(02-08-2019, 06:07 AM)smedz Wrote: I do actually have a story related to this trophy hunting.
I was on a trip to Forth Worth, Texas with my FFA group. On the way, we made some stops, one of them was Nashville, Tennesee. The group I was with went into a store called "The Boot Barn" where they had many cowboy boots made out of many animals like fish, ostriches, stingrays, antelope, etc. The lady who worked at the store showed us some boots in the collection, now my Ag teacher talked about elephant skin boots being sold there, so to see if that was true, I asked the lady if they had any and sure enough, they did. I held that boot in my hands, and I just thought about the elephants, and then I put the boot down. I just thought to myself,
"How could you people do this!?"
I then heard the lady say this
"They are endangered, but we need to control the population."
I then thought "They're endangered! They aren't out of control!"
I saw boots when I first came into the store, after now knowing elephant skin boots were actually real, I asked the lady if those boots were real, and I swear, she said they were actual leopard skin boots. She and I talked about the situation, she said she didn't support what they were doing, I did believe her, but while I was talking with my folks about this, my mom suggested she was probably just saying that to keep me from yelling at her. After my group left the store, I just couldn't stop thinking about the elephants, and I did almost tear up. I'll also say this, killing elephants is like killing people, as these animals are known to mourn this dead, basically they're like humans mentally, only they're herbivores. Those who hunt elephants, I just have one word to describe them: Monsters.
If someone has lived with cows & Buffaloes (horses included), one would say the same - these animals mourn, love and care (I would say all animals do).
I'll just share a small experience of mine, when I was a kid (7-8 years old, around 24 years back), we used to have 2-3 buffaloes for milk in native village (my grandparents stayed there).
Now I used to visit the place only once a year, and would play with buffaloes. One of these buffaloes was very aggressive and wouldn't allow anyone in vicinity if person was unknown or visited regularly but wasn't a family member, but whenever we (me & my brother) visited the place, her response was same - no sign of aggression at all. I would go and shake her horns, try to milk her and do all sorts of stuff kids would do, sit on her, pull by her ears etc - she won't mind any it, just like others but others were calm but this was known for her fierce nature.
Certainly Buffaloes knew and remembered us, whether we would be visit the place only for 2-3 weeks a year.
Now coming to the subject:
How absurd is this statement made by hunter - "Finally, I can think of no other way to stop this beautiful tiny antelope becoming extinct in a country where commercial bushmeat poaching is a way of life."
02-20-2019, 06:05 AM( This post was last modified: 02-22-2019, 11:24 AM by Rishi )
Wildlife Services and Wildlife Killing Contests: A Big Disgrace
In the United States of America, lots of predators are killed by Wildlife Services and in Wildlife Killing Contests. These people will trick you into thinking they're protecting livestock and wild game by doing this. However, it turns out, these people are the real monsters at work. Look at what the people at Predator Defense and Project Coyote are doing on this matter, and you will see that predators are crucial to the land, and that this war on them isn't necessary.
But the evidence that “hunting elephants saves them” is thin. The hunting-safari business employs few people, and the money from fees that trickles down to the villagers is insignificant. A 2009 report from the IUCN revealed that sport hunting in West Africa does not provide significant benefits to the surrounding communities. A more recent report by an Australian economic-analysis firm for Humane Society International found that trophy hunting amounts to less than 2 percent of tourism revenue in eight African countries that permit it.*
Can legalised-hunting help conservation?
