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“Conservation hunting; African-style” on the world’s biggest stage

The face of voluntary conservation hunting in NSW, Game Council Chairman Robert Borsak, remains unapologetic about hunting the world’s largest pest species on the world’s largest hunting stage; rogue crop raiding elephants in Africa.

“I enjoy hunting and I’m going to continue doing it; because it’s in my genes,” he says.

Robert knows the depth of feeling from self-styled environmentalists, having been the centre of a media storm earlier this year after a two-year old website account of an elephant hunt in Africa was picked over by the mainstream metropolitan media.

“I was the subject of death-threats, abusive mail, and a whole raft of wildly-inaccurate allegations — that I was paid $342 a day as head of Game Council, that I had improperly directed Game Council contracts to companies I had an interest in — it was an object lesson in media assassination-by-innuendo,” he explained.

Yet he doesn’t regret for a minute posting the original article; “Bulls in the Rain” on a hunting interest website where it had sat without comment or controversy.

“Hunting is an instinct with some people, it doesn’t have to be a majority of people, as long as they’re following the laws, helping people and the environment, they should be congratulated, not demonised for this work,” he said.

Most galling were the claims regarding the situation in southern Africa — that elephants are endangered; that they provide no threat to local farmers; that the work was trophy hunting; and that the money from the hunt goes to Robert Mugabe.

There are 100,000 elephants in Zimbabwe, an impoverished country half the size of NSW, with elephant herds battling subsistence farmers who survive on an annual income of less than $100 per year.

“The villagers only source of food are subsistence crops — maize, cotton, melons, and sorghum… and bananas, you should see what an elephant does to a banana plantation!”

Subsistence village in rural Zimbabwe. There are 100,000 elephants in Zimbabwe, an impoverished country half the size of NSW.

“They’ve killed hundreds of Zimbabweans every year, but none of my critics care about that, to them, the wildlife is more important than the people. If that’s not racism, I don’t know what is.”

He tells of the devastation of seeing whole crops; the only food that a village has to survive for the year, destroyed by elephants and cape buffalo.

“These elephants and cape buffalo come into the crops at night, the villagers have little huts on stilts on the edge of the crops. They keep guard in the crops at night and beat pots & pans when the elephants come; people are killed by these elephants so we’re saving lives as well as livelihoods.”

One answer to the problem was the development of the local Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRES) program.

Developed in Zimbabwe, CAMPFIRES charges international hunters to remove the elephants destroying the crops while utilising the meat, hide, and tusks of the harvested animals to fund local projects.

The unique program helps support schools, health clinics, and drought relief in rural Zimbabwe, and hunters are not allowed to retain any trophies.

“CAMPFIRES is a perfect example of an indigenous program benefitting grass-roots work in these impoverished communities,” he said. “Monies from the Program helps support schools, health clinics, and drought relief in rural Zimbabwe.”

Research supports these claims with a Biodiversity Conservation study finding that: between 1989 and 2006, CAMPFIRE income, mostly from high-valued safari hunting, totalled nearly USD $30 million, of which 52 % was allocated to sub-district wards and villages for community projects and household benefits.

Children in a rural village in Zimbabwe where CAMPFIRES is operating: “Monies from the Program helps support schools, health clinics, and drought relief in rural Zimbabwe.”

“I spend about $25,000 on each visit and I’m always accompanied by a professional guide. We go from village to village asking ‘have you had any crop raiders last night?’”

“Many of these hunts are in tsetse-fly areas where they cannot keep cattle and therefore the locals do not get any protein. However, local wildlife are immune to the fly. Once we shoot one of these elephants, the locals turn up in their hundreds to get the meat,” Robert said.

After the hunt: “Once we shoot one of these elephants, the locals turn up in their hundreds to get the meat.”

He describes the process as: “conservation hunting; African-style.”

“I do enjoy hunting and I don’t deny that, I don’t care what the politically-correct say.
I’ve been on these trips six or seven times since the early 1980’s and you do see a discernible difference in the lives of the people in these villages,” he concluded.

Discuss Rob's media article here

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