How To Save the Elephants? Buy Ivory, Shoot Them

mjperryblogspot.com.au ^ | June 8, 2011 | Professor Mark J. Perry

[marktwain]

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. 

[1_Inch_Group]

Also, that’s not a baby elephant.

[TigersEye]

Here’s a saw. There’s a bull elephant. I’ll hold yer beer. ;-)

[Darth Mall]

BFL

[Axenolith]

It’s gotta stay local for the most part. Pops hunted Zimbabwe a few years back and had the experience of a lifetime. Spectacular scenery, excellent game and warm, friendly folk. Trophy fees there are about 5X lower than South Africa. The US dollar is supreme there. The US currency in use there often looks like old leather it sees so much use in the countryside.

[mcshot]

Chipper wins!

[piasa]

article "Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community":

Darnit... link goes to page not found

[piasa]

Could be...

Also, with an economy in the gutter there would be far less development in Zimbabwe than in Kenya.

[elcid1970]

What’s red & white on the outside and grey on the inside?

Campbell’s Chunky Elephant Soup.

;^)

[Chipper]

It would accomplish more than the disasters they have been thrown into the last ~10 years.

[Glennb51]

Then the poachers will kill the elephants so they don’t spend any time tracking a tuskless elephant, like they do when they track a rhino and find out its horn was sawed off.

[EQAndyBuzz]

“Here’s a saw. There’s a bull elephant. I’ll hold yer beer. ;-)”

It would guarantee top Darwin award finish. :)

[nobamanomore]

yes, they do.

Look at this from my friend Buzz Charlton’s group..

http://www.dapuzim.com/

[TigersEye]

You’re gonna need a bigger clown for that rodeo!

[EQAndyBuzz]

What do you do to an Elephant with three balls?

Walk him and pitch to the Rhino.

[TigersEye]

ROTFL

[Bobalu]