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What it Takes to Preserve Wilderness

One of the major concerns of Western environmentalists has been the exploitation of resources in the developing world. Westerners often view parts of Africa and Latin America as the last frontiers of a pristine environment that is the preserve of all mankind.

In an effort to protect the animals, their habitats, and the resources of the developing world, environmentalists have worked through Western governments (and, through aid guarantees,) developing nations to ban various activities that they deem harmful to the habitat.

Philosopher David Schmidtz writes about ways these efforts have failed and alternative methods that work:

Tanzania's Bounty Hunters
In the Maswa Preserve, near Serengeti, Robin Hurt once led hunting safaris. Tanzania banned hunting in 1973, so Hurt went elsewhere. Tanzania legalized hunting again in 1984. Robin Hurt came back in 1985. During that twelve year moratorium on hunting, the wildlife virtually disappeared. Why? Because of poachers. Without licensed hunters to keep poachers in line, poachers ran amok.

But was is the difference between a poacher and a hunter? A hunter is just a poacher by another name, no? In fact, the difference is enormous. Hunters hunt with rifles. In Tanzania, poachers hunt with snares, and snares are a disaster for wildlife. The people of Makao, for example, were laying snares around water holes, or along time worn paths to water holes, or they would cut new paths in the bushes and lay snares along those. Robin Hurt found twenty lion skulls in one snare line. He found snare lines that ran for two miles. More of than not, the animal caught is not what the poacher wants. Even if it is, vultures or hyenas often get to the animal before the poacher does. Snare-hunting is catastrophically wasteful from an ecological perspective, but from a poacher's perspective it is a lot easier than hunting with a bow and arrow. The Makao switched to snares.

When Hurt resumed operations in 1985, he began with a casual anti-poaching effort, picking up snares as he went, in his spare time. Gradually realizing the magnitude of the problem, he concluded that the Makao had to be enlisted. How? Well, why not just pay them to turn in snares and poachers? Here, too, I would have worried about incentive problems. (If Hurt pays too much for the snares, won't people respond by making more snares?) Still, it was an idea worth trying. Hurt raised enough money to try it. It worked.

Zimbabwe's Local Autonomy
There have been problems in Zimbabwe, as in other countries, with wildlife molesting villagers, to the point where villagers came to feel that government wildlife protection was persecuting people for the sake of the animals. And they were basically right. One major effect of the bans on commerce in wildlife was to prevent locals from making significant money. "It was clear that to the local people, the wildlife was simply a nuisance. Elephants and other large herbivores raided their meager crops and sometimes even trampled their huts, while lions and other large carnivores occasionally preyed on their domestic stock. The wild animals often moved into the communal lands from national parks and other protected areas, but because the locals saw no direct benefit from these areas, they saw no reason to protect this errant game." Wildlife groups had failed to ask: What could make it rational for villagers to choose wildlife over cattle?

Today there is an answer. Shortly after Zimbabwe gained political independence in 1980, its Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management concluded that conventional agricultural practices were ecologically and economically unsound throughout much of Zimbabwe. (The soil is not right, and there is not enough water.) The best use of the land was as a reservoir for wildlife. The Department also realize dthat the problem would not be solved unless it were largely handed over to local people. Over a period of years, the Department created the CAMPFIRE program. They surveyed community areas, assessed wildlife populations, and came to conclusions about what sort of numbers could be considered surplus game. They then gave local communities a nearly free hand in deciding what to do with the surplus.

Local communities were granted authority to cull herds, sell hunting permits, or set up tourist ventures, and since 1992 they have been allowed to keep eighty percent of the money. (The rest goes to wildlife management and rural district administration.) They put some of that money in a fund for compensating farmers when lions take their goats or elephants trample their crops, which defuses much of the resentment of wildlife. In some districts, rangers periodically hunt impala and sell meat to local villagers at a price that covers cost of the hunt, making villagers less dependent on cattle as a source of protein. The issue is not just money, but self-sufficiency. Decisions are made in the village square. In that setting, people have more knowledge, more understanding, more voice. There is less room for corruption. Decision-making is more efficient and more equitable.

David Holt-Biddle notes that for Tshikwarakwara, a village in southeastern Zimbabwe, "Poaching and illegal hunting were the order of the day, the general opinion being that these were just nuisance animals and the only people to benefit from them were the white hunters, usually from abroad." In the words of a local official, with the advent of CAMPFIRE, "the poaching and illegal hunting have stopped completely, because everyone in the community is a policeman now."

A note of caution: there are programs in southern Africa that call themselves community-based but merely gesture at sharing revenue and at granting communities to set local policy. Such programs do not work. Political corruption in Africa is deep and pervasive, and there is no magic cure for it. So far, though, CAMPFIRE seems to be working.

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Excerpted from David Schmidtz, "When Preservationism Doesn't Preserve," Environmental Values, 6 (1997).

Originally published 1997

http://www.aworldconnected.org/article.php/308.html

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