How To Save the Elephants? Buy Ivory, Shoot Them

Carpe Diem ^ | 09 June 2011 | Mark J. Perry

[Palter]

In the 1970s, Kenya had about six times as many elephants as Zimbabwe, and today Zimbabwe has three times more elephants than Kenya (see chart).  What happened that caused the dramatic reversal in elephant populations in the two African countries? 

Terry Anderson and Shawn Regan of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) explain in their excellent article "Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community":

"Anti-hunting groups succeeded in getting Kenya to ban all hunting in 1977. Since then, its population of large wild animals has declined between 60 and 70 percent. The country’s elephant population declined from 167,000 in 1973 to just 16,000 in 1989. Poaching took its toll on elephants because of their damage to both cropland and people. Today Kenya wildlife officials boast a doubling of the country’s elephant population to 32,000, but nearly all are in protected national parks where poaching can be controlled.

In sharp contrast to Kenya, consider what has happened in Zimbabwe. In 1989, results-oriented groups such as the World Wildlife Fund helped implement a program known as the Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources or CAMPFIRE. This approach devolves the rights to benefit from, dispose of, and manage natural resources to the local level, including the right to allow safari hunting. Community leaders with local knowledge about wildlife and its interface with humans help establish sustainable hunting quotas. Hunting then provides jobs for community members, compensation for crop and property damage, revenue to build schools, clinics, and water wells, and meat for villagers.

By granting local people control over wildlife resources, their incentive to protect it has strengthened. As a result, poaching has been contained and human-wildlife conflicts have been reduced. While challenges remain, especially from the current political climate in Zimbabwe, CAMPFIRE has quietly produced results with strikingly little activist rhetoric.

Between 1989 and 2005, Zimbabwe’s total elephant population more than doubled from 37,000 to 85,000, with half living outside of national parks. Today, some put the number as high as 100,000, even after decades of legal, trophy hunting. All of this has occurred with an economy in shambles, regime uncertainty, and mounting socio-political challenges."

See a related CD post here on how private property rights, legalized hunting, commercial farming, and the commercial sale of alligator meat and hides saved the American alligator from extinction. 

[YHAOS]

Mysteries no Liberal can ever grasp.

[Vendome]

Culling herds of all animals in managed process can increase populations.

Otherwise animals will be shut out and can be severely pressured.

Game management also teaches conservation to the local populace and why poaching or allowing herds to be pressured is bad for the environment, animal kingdom and their country.

They can make money and earn a living through game management.

Many hunts end with the hunter giving the meat to the locals and having pre-taxidermy performed.

The tag for an animal as well as the taking fee benefit the locals and the country.

Managing animal populations is also key to the country’s identity.

Just better all around for animals and humans alike.

[Lurker]

Liberals like Africa a whole lot more than they like Africans.

[freedumb2003]

>>Liberals like Africa a whole lot more than they like Africans.<<

Remind liberals that the real slavers were the Africans themselves and watch their heads explode.

[Berlin_Freeper]

Documentary Heaven

[calex59]

Many big game hunters predicted this would happen if they outlawed hunting in Kenya. The Elephant isn't the only species that suffered either.

The same thing happened in various areas in the US also, the Kaibab National forest is a prime example of killing off a deer herd by starvation when hunting was stopped and the herd over populated and starved and also ruined the vegetation for many, many years.

[LouAvul]

Wildlife management for hunting is the best way to preserve animal species.

Conversely, outlawing hunting decimates animal populations. (Overpopulation, disease, starvation, etc.)

Conclusion: liberals hate hunters more than they love animals.

[munin]

We all know that a regulated hunt is much better than uncontroled poaching,
but the lefty dimmo global warming elitists could never understand anything that make common sence or horse sence as McCloud used to say

[stormer]

I’ve worked on programs similar to this in Namibia. This article doesn’t really tell the whole story. First off Kenya has three times the population of Zimbabwe, and much higher population density and birthrate. Habitat in Kenya is also more fragmented because of development, and elephants really need room to roam. Poaching is a serious problem in a lot of places, but some more so than others because of access to markets for poached goods, as is the case in Kenya. Ultimately the challenge is to convince people that animals are worth more alive for tourism and guided, very expensive hunts, than they are dead at the hands of a poacher, who will only make a fraction of the animal’s value.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Palter. They’re really tickling the ivories, if you know what I mean.

[Fire_on_High]

Animals who provide something for us seem to have this habit of never risking extinction. Does anyone worry about dogs, horses, or cows going extinct? Or even tending towards the less common...llamas, camels, or peacocks?

All of them provide something be it meat, milk, beauty, work, or companionship, and their survival is guaranteed as long as ours is.