NitroX
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| (.700 member) |
| 27/12/07 02:47 AM |
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Re: Wilbur Smith, so eloquent
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Quote:
If we are returning to discuss Smith in this thread as it started, it appears that Smith's solution to the problems in Southern Africa was to create a "Black" middle class, to share out the pie so to speak. In this view his was not a dissimilar to that which some are trying to take in socially engineering a solution to some of the problems in the US or Britain.
I think DD's Wilbur Smith quotation is more about wildlife and its needing an economic value to survive.
The fees from safari hunting or other utilisation such as game farming, sales of animal products from managed utilisation and also such activities as tourist game viewing are ways wildlife achieves an economic value in Africa, and competes in the economic human market for reserving areas of habitat for wildlife vs other land uses such as agriculture.
As such it provides value to the local population through hunting fees or a percentage of them paid from trophy fees, daily fees etc, employment opportunities for locals, to the relevent countries from forex earnings, to the wider world population through satisfaction that unique wildlife still exists in the wild in good numbers away from human urban 'jungles'. A connection to our genetic past for us to enjoy.