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Online friend Marcus Janssen recently shared his speech with me, a speech he gave to a group of people at Sandringham on sustainable hunting in Africa.

Marcuss is also the editor at the UK magazine, "Fieldsports Magazine", one of the best shooting and hunting magazines in the UK today.

Marcus Janssen
26 February at 21:30 ·

I have been asked by a number of people to share the talk I gave recently at Sandringham on sustainable hunting in Southern Africa. Well, here it is...

Grey partridges and white rhino

Good evening. Roger Draycott from the GWCT kindly invited me along this evening to share my thoughts on sustainable hunting in Southern Africa, and, specifically, its role in wildlife conservation. This may seem like a slightly unexpected topic, and what is even more obscure perhaps, is the fact that I am going to try to convince you all that English grey partridges and Southern African white rhino have a lot in common.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am the editor of Fieldsports Magazine, but I was born and grew up in Southern Africa. At the age of 18, having completed my A levels, I joined a well-known hunting outfitters and began my apprenticeship as a professional hunter. Years later, I decided to continue my formal education and moved to the UK to go to university.

And one of the first things that struck me when I arrived in the UK, was the attitudes of British people to big game hunting. Even keen game Shots seemed to consider the hunting of species like elephant, lion and leopard to be completely unjustifiable, deplorable even.

“But what's the difference between a grouse and a buffalo?” I would ask.

And I meant it – the justification behind wild game shooting in the UK, is exactly the same as it is for hunting leopard, buffalo or even elephant in Southern Africa.

The animal is humanely despatched, and part of the considerable investment made by the hunter or shooter pays for the management of the habitat that supports that species, ensuring that there is a harvestable surplus in coming years. Without the surplus, there is no hunting, and quite often, without hunting, there is no surplus.

Now, as I mentioned, I am going to try to draw some parallels between grey partridges and white rhino. The reason I have chosen to focus on white rhino is because hunting played a pivotal role in saving the species from the brink of extinction in the 1970s and 80s. And we all know what would happen to grey partridges in the UK if it wasn’t for landowners with an interest in game shooting – people who are willing to spend money on habitat creation, management and predator control.

On any given piece of land, wildlife will only take precedent over other activities if it is financially viable – it must at least break even. If it doesn’t, alternative revenue streams must be found and the wildlife may suffer as a consequence. Simply put, wildlife must justify its presence in financial terms – and nowhere is this more important than in sub-Saharan Africa where employment is low and poverty is rife.

And it just so happens that one of the most effective ways of making wildlife pay is through sport or trophy hunting – and in ways that you might not might expect.

It is my personal view that in order for wildlife conservation to really work in Africa, we must take a realistic, pragmatic view. There is no place for sentimentality – wildlife is wildlife. For example, I believe we should be just as comfortable with the killing of a rhino as we are with the killing of a grey partridge or grouse. But only on the condition that the population is sustainable, the animal is cleanly and humanely despatched, the meat is utilised, and the process benefits both the local economy and the species as a whole and the wider ecosystem.

The client’s reasons for wanting to hunt a rhino or elephant are, quite frankly, irrelevant. What is important is that they are willing to pay good money for the privilege of doing so, and how that money is used.

There is a tendency for people to claim that there aren’t enough lions, leopards, elephants or rhino to warrant hunting them. Again, think about that in the context of grey partridges or grouse – the demand for the sport that these animals provide is the very reason why there is a surplus.
I spoke to the Duke of Northumberland recently, and he told me that in order to finance his very succesful grey partridge project, he sells a number of pheasant days in the park at Alnwick. What a neat model. And if there was no prospect whatsoever of a shootable surplus, would he keep it going? I doubt it.

Returning to Africa, as long as there are people willing to pay good money to hunt big game, there is an incentive to supply it – and in order to supply it, you've got to manage the habitat so that it can produce that all-important surplus. Again, the same principle applies in the U.K.
Having said that, I’m not suggesting for a minute that hunting is a panacea or cure-all for all of Africa's wildlife and economic problems. Of course there are many areas that either have naturally high densities of big game, or are particularly scenic that will always attract photographic tourists, thus making non-hunting safaris a financially viable and preferable option. Obvious examples would be places like the Masai Mara, Serengeti, Ngoro Ngoro Crater, Okavango Delta, Victoria Falls area, etc, where hunting either isn’t necessary, or is less important than photographic tourism.

But what about the vast tracts of land surrounding these wildlife or scenic hotspots, areas that may be home to significant and important wildlife populations, but in concentrations that aren’t sufficiently high to attract tourists?

It is in these areas where hunting can play a really important role. And significantly, these hunting concessions cover 20% more ground than all of Africa’s national parks combined.

In Southern Africa, contracts for hunting concessions on both private and government land are usually granted to reputable outfitters on the basis that, in addition to the agreed trophy fee, they will be responsible for anti-poaching patrols where necessary, employing locals, ensuring that any infrastructure such as camps, lodges, fences, tracks and roads ate built and maintained and, wherever possible, recovering all game meat for local consumption or retail.

Everything is utilised. Money is injected into the rural economy, into research and conservation, and the safari staff effectively become the managers, the eyes and ears, in an area that would otherwise be susceptible to indiscriminate poaching. Their very presence acts as an effective deterrent to poachers. And poaching is a significant problem in Africa.

Again, Southern white rhino provide the perfect example of just how effective this model can be.

The horn of both white and black rhino has a higher street value than gold or cocaine on the black market in the Far East (a single horn can fetch as much as $300,000), thanks to the belief that it is of great medicinal value and a sign of status and wealth. Of course, this is complete nonsense – it is made of keratin, the same substance your hair and fingernails are made of.

As a result, South Africa, which is home to over 90% of the world’s Southern white rhino, is currently experiencing a rhino poaching pandemic. On average, more than two rhino are lost to poachers every single day – in Kruger National Park alone. Think about that for a moment.

And these poachers are brutal in their methods and selection – no animal is spared, including pregnant cows or those with unweaned calves.

And the problem isn’t abating; it has been escalating since 2008. As a result, protecting rhino has become difficult, dangerous and expensive. Funded by a few charities and the government, specially-trained and fully-armed anti-poaching units are deployed to act as a deterrent, either capturing the poachers and handing them over to the authorities, or driving them back over the border into Mozambique or Zimbabwe from whence they came.

But in South Africa, privately-owned game reserves and ranches amount to in excess of 20 million hectares, supporting more than 16 million head of game, including 25 per cent of South Africa's 18,000+ white rhino.

But on private land, the onus is with the landowners to foot the bill for any anti-poaching initiatives. They don't get any pay-outs from the government or charities. But to what end? It would be far easier (and more cost effective) for them to just get rid of the rhino altogether. Well, thanks to a policy of consumptive wildlife utilisation, including hunting, they have an even greater incentive not to.
Let me explain.

In the 1970s, the Natal Parks Board made one of the boldest and most controversial decisions in the history of wildlife conservation.

Despite the fact that Southern white rhino were surely heading for extinction – there were 936 left on earth – they decided to introduce legitimate private ownership of white rhino and, at the same time, legalise the hunting of the species.

Can you imagine what members of Greenpeace, PETA and the League Against Cruel Sports would say if such a decision was taken today?!

As bonkers as this move may sound, it paved the way for one of the most remarkable recoveries of a critically endangered species in history.

Within ten years the live auction value of southern white rhino had rocketed from R200 per animal to R250,000 per animal.

Driven primarily by a demand for rhino by the trophy hunting industry, rhino became highly sought-after and represented an excellent investment for land owners and National Parks. Not only that, but they had an incentive to breed rhino on their properties, either to sell to trophy hunting clients or at live auctions to other landowners wanting to do the same.

As a result, white rhino numbers in South Africa rocketed from less than 437 individuals in 1953 to just short of 19,000 in 2010.

The late, great Dr. Ian Player, the man and main driving force behind Operation Rhino, acknowledged the crucial role that trophy hunting played in an interview in 2011: “Hunting, we have proved, led to the increase from 437 rhino in 1953 to in excess of 18,000 in 2010. For the loss of a few animals (for the purposes of trophy hunting), the overall population increased. Regrettably, this is a form of logic that is lost on most people.”

His views are echoed by Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes, a wildlife resource economist who has studied the economics of rhino ownership for almost three decades: “Private landowners need sources of income to protect their animals,” he said in an interview in 2010. “And one of the key economic drivers is regulated trophy hunting, which provides private landowners with an incentive to manage and protect their wildlife from external threats.”

Rhino are just one example of how hunting can in fact be hugely beneficial to wildlife conservation. As long as there is a demand for trophy animals by hunters, landowners can justify ploughing money into habitat rejuvenation and management, research, breeding programs and rigorous anti-poaching initiatives.

Now, let’s compare this to Kenya.

Forty years ago, Kenya had the most extraordinary wildlife conservation policy – it was very, very broad based: from strict protection in the national parks and reserves, right through to ranching and cropping, live capture and sales, and, of course, sport or trophy hunting (and the value-added industries that come with hunting such as tanning, taxidermy, curios, travel, accommodation etc).

Now, in the mid 1970s, Kenya and South Africa had roughly the same population of game – somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million head.

However, in 1977, Kenya banned all consumptive use of wildlife, including hunting, and over the next 35 years, game numbers plummeted by about 80 per cent to approximately 300,000 head of game – an average loss of between 4 and 4.5 per cent per annum.

Mike Norton Griffiths was a wildlife biologist with the Serengeti Research Institute and now works as a land-use economist with a particular interest in the economics of conservation, especially the economic returns from agriculture, livestock and wildlife. And he believes that in order to look after wildlife effectively, it must have a high economic value. “Kenya shows a textbook example of what happens to a natural resource base when you remove its economic viability,” he says.

Now, if we juxtapose Kenya’s situation with that of South Africa’s, where a policy of full wildlife utilisation was adopted in the 1970s, including a thriving trophy hunting industry, a very different picture emerges.
In South Africa, game numbers rocketed, from 1.5 million head to in excess of 20 million head. And while South Africa is now home to approximately 18,000 southern white rhino, Kenya has only 350 (a 2010 estimate), all of which were introduced from South Africa and 70 per cent of which are on private land.

On the whole, big game hunting in Southern Africa is very carefully regulated by government agencies that ensure that strict quotas are adhered to and hunting practices are ethical and of the highest standards. Yes, there are rogues out there, as there are in every industry, but, like gamekeepers, PH’s know that without a sustainable surplus of game, there will be no hunting in the future.

And they must pass rigorous tests and exams before a government-issued license is granted. This license pertains not only to the country in which the exams are sat but also the specific region or province. There are stringent codes of conduct and strict rules and regulations that apply to each and every species that can be legally hunted. And the hunting of any species listed by CITES will be subject to additional international import and export laws. Poaching on the other hand, is of course illegal, ungovernable, unregulated and is done indiscriminately. There's a big difference.

And yet, even the mainstream press in the UK will often quote “hunting” as being the cause for the dramatic drop in rhino or elephant numbers in recent years.

Remember, the presence of hunters acts as a deterrent to poachers. The Zambian government learnt that lesson when they banned hunting in 2013. 20 months later, they revoked the ban due to a loss of revenue and an escalation of poaching in areas that had previously been managed by hunting operators.

And since Botswana banned trophy hunting in 2013, poaching has escalated, but there have been other unexpected consequences, too. Near Pandematenga in northern Botswana, the biggest migration of elephants left in Africa moves between Chobe National Park and Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. Hunting camps used to provide water points for an entire generation of elephants that made the 450-mile trek. With these water sources drying up, local environmentalists worry that some of the 30,000-plus elephants will die.
Another example of how hunting can benefit wildlife can be found in Zimbabwe, of all places. The Bubye Valley Conservancy is a 925,000-acre privately owned wildlife area, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest conservation successes in Africa. Converted from a number of cattle ranches to a contiguous wildlife reserve in 1994 (only 22 years ago), it is now home to Zimbabwe’s largest population of lions, as well as the third largest black rhino population in the world (after Kruger and Etosha).
Dr. Byron du Preez, a Bubye Valley project leader and member of a research unit at Oxford University, is neither pro nor anti hunting, but he willingly attributes the conservation success of Bubye Valley to the fact that it is self-sufficient, financially. “The success of Bubye is only possible because it is a business and is self-sufficient in generating the funds to maintain fences, roads, pay staff, manage the wildlife, pump water, and support the surrounding communities—all extremely necessary factors involved in keeping wildlife alive in Africa.” he says.

It probably won't surprise you to hear that up to 50% of the revenue that Bubye Valley generates comes from hunting safaris.

And despite these textbook examples of the benefits of hunting, the highly emotional anti-hunting sentiment driven by animal rights groups and exacerbated by the wilfully ignorant mainstream press continues. Some argue that it is ignorance and idealism that is the greatest threat to Africa’s wildlife – but that is a topic for another day, perhaps.

The key underlying principle to all of this is that hunting provides local people with an incentive to look after wildlife; and it gives wild animals a value far greater than that of their meat. Just as it does with partridges and grouse in the UK.

In South Africa, hunting has done exactly that: on a typical conventional grassland ranch, the ROI from game ranching is now several times higher than that for cattle ranching, and the past four decades have seen an estimated 3.1 million hectares of land converted from cattle ranches to wildlife reserves. Wildlife industries now contribute a total of R14 billion to South Africa's GDP.

Southern Africa's fenced, private reserves and game ranches are, generally, fragmented in nature, and an important part of any hands-on wildlife management regime within an enclosed area is the need to maintain natural checks and balances on wildlife populations. As it is in the UK. Excess stock must be removed, either sold at live game auctions or to hunting outfitters who then offer the excess quota to fee-paying hunters. It's a system that works – both for the landowner and for the greater good of the wildlife.

“The human rural population is doubling every 20 years,” says Ron Thomson, a field ecologist who has spent 54 years of his life in the service of national parks and wildlife management in Southern Africa. “Twenty-five per cent of South Africa's population are unemployed, so to ensure the survival of wildlife, we must add value to animals by making them essential to the livelihoods of human beings, especially in rural areas. This is the simple reality of Africa today. And hunting is an important piece of that puzzle.”

This sentiment is echoed by Dr. Bandile Mkhize, CEO of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, which has been involved in successfully setting up several community-owned and run wildlife conservancies and in advising these communities on how to manage their reserves. “We advise them to engage in hunting as part of their revenue generation,” says Dr. Mkhize. “Many of these communities can survive today because of the money generated by hunting. So I don't, for the life of me, believe that there is any merit in the argument that we should stop hunting.”

It has been argued by moral absolutists that wildlife should not have to justify its existence by being productive, but the truth is that if land does not provide meaningful economic and social betterment, particularly in rural areas, the future of Africa's wildlife will remain under threat.

I am not sure if I have succeeded in convincing you that grey partridges and white rhino have rather a lot in common, but perhaps the next time you hear someone claim that hunters are contributing to the decline of the elephant or rhino, you will think about that statement in the context of grey partridges or grouse.

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John aka NitroX

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Govt get out of our lives NOW!
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