Consumptive Utilisation of Wildlife? Been there; doesn't work!

OPINION

Consumptive Utilisation?

Been there; Doesn’t Work 'Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter'.

Chinua Achebe from an Ewe-mina proverb

HARVEY CROZE is an ecologist and ethologist with 50 years of experience in East African ecosystems.

WINNIE KIIRU is a wildlife biologist and founder of CHD Conservation Kenya.

KEITH LINDSAY is a conservation biologist and environmental consultant with over 40 years of professional experience in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

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onsumptive utilisation of wildlife -- that is, harvesting wild animals for profit -- has been tried and rejected a number of times in Kenya in the past half century. Three main enterprises were tried; commercial wildlife cropping, wildlife (along with livestock) ranching, and commercial hunting. Ecology and economics just couldn’t conspire to make it work.

Let’s consider the three enterprises.

COMMERCIAL WILDLIFE CROPPING In 1961, the government of Kenya (GoK) tried cropping zebra and wildebeest in Narok District, wherein lies the famous Maasai Mara. A

UN Food and Agricultural (FAO) study concluded that the cropping schemes failed due to insurmountable problems of harvesting, processing and marketing. In short, the costs greatly outweighed the returns.

Undaunted by negative result and assisted by FAO and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), in 1966 the GoK launched the Range Management in Kenya project aimed at increasing meat production from rangelands while maintaining wildlife populations on which the tourist industry was founded. In other words, let’s have our cake and (literally) eat it too.

The second project also failed to demonstrate economically sustainable

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Fair Game?

IN KAJIADO’S POPULAR PROTECTED AREAS, AMBOSELI AND NAIROBI NATIONAL PARKS, WILDLIFE VIEWING GENERATED HIGHER REVENUES THAN CROPPING benefits of consumptive utilisation. ecosystems, as well as other potential In 1974 a UNDP/FAO review mission consumptive activities, game ranching concluded that, “…the project followed and hunting. a wrong course due to … an undue The KWMP conclusions on emphasis on game cropping.” consumptive utilisation were wideNonetheless, since the 1970-1974 reaching and mostly negative. The Development Plan persisted with the 1980 Terminal Report cautiously notion of squeezing as much money as observed that cropping of medium-sized possible from natural ecosystems by herbivores (wildebeest and hartebeest) pledging to “…increase the economic it. could be successful in theory. But there return from wildlife resources…”, FAO’s were too many negative, unknown Regional Office in Nairobi obligingly or uncontrollable factors to make it launched yet another project -- the workable, profitable and sustainable Kenya Wildlife Management Project it. in practice, given socio-economic and (KWMP) -- that ran from 1975 to 1977. biological realities that included: 2 The project area was the 20,000km Kajiado District.

Marketing failures, in particular, The new KWMP set fresh economic the near-impossibility of establishing and ecological objectives to be achieved stable market supply from naturally through integrated land use planning fluctuating wildlife populations. and sound ecological science. The Economic analysis that demonstrated project’s widened scope considered a host of ecological and social factors cropping yielded only small profit that control and modify semi-arid margins and inequitable distribution of 18 SWARA JANUARY - MARCH 2019

benefits, and that projected Maasai cattle production trumped wild herbivores harvesting for converting animals into consumable protein. Furthermore, in Kajiado’s popular protected areas, Amboseli and Nairobi National Parks, wildlife viewing generated higher revenues than cropping.

Ecological variability resulting in large wildlife population fluctuations due to wide variation in annual rainfall and forage. KWMP concluded “…it has not yet been proved that wild herbivore populations can tolerate the additional long-term mortality required to make a cropping scheme economic on a sustainable basis.”

Conflict with other land use activities, in particular value-laden traditional Maasai cattle-rearing and wildlife-based tourism. In cropping and hunting areas, disgruntled visitors see only the backsides of traumatized animals running away.

GAME RANCHING Meanwhile, back on the ranch and still in the 1960s, ranchers from South Africa to Kenya were experimenting with multiple land uses by running

livestock and cropping wildlife on the same landscape. At Galana Ranch on the border of Tsavo East National Park, for example, a research programme aimed at domesticating wild herbivores, including elands and oryx. The 20year Galana work revealed much about wildlife biology, but found that the behavioural and physiological adaptations enabling wildlife to exploit semi-arid ecosystems involved tradeoffs that preclude most of the features that make our existing domestic species such useful and tractable sources of protein.

During the same period, thirdgeneration Kenyan David Hopcraft had a go on the 8,000ha family ranch in the Athi-Kapiti wooded- and bushedgrassland 40km from Nairobi. Game Ranching Ltd. raised funds to erect fencing and tool up for cropping in 1976 and eventually got permission to crop in 1981. The ranch successfully supplied a handful of Nairobi restaurants such as the famous Carnivore with hartebeeste, zebras, wildebeeste, giraffes and elands.

Despite having a monopoly on supply of game meat to upmarket Nairobi restaurants, the high costs of harvesting and processing wild animals required a break-even sale price of over double that of high quality beef -- the capital costs of establishing the game ranch were unlikely to be recovered from meat sales. The blocking of wildlife movements by ranch fences and the technical expertise required for population management, animal health and meat inspection combined to restrict the natural advantages of wild over domestic herbivores. It

Fringe-eared Oryx: big and beautiful, but tricky to herd.

WILDLIFE RANCHING WAS TRIED FOR YEARS ON AN ATHI-KAPITI RANCH BUT COULD ONLY BREAK EVEN IF GAME MEAT PRICES WERE HIGHER THAN FILLET STEAK was doubtful if the experiment could be scaled-up to other parts of the country. By the mid-1990s, the Kenya Wildlife Service had granted cropping quotas to some sixty group and private ranches under the Wildlife Use Rights Programme. But on top of economic and technical problems, the legal wildlife meat sales provided loopholes for illegal bushmeat to be marketed. By 2004, the GoK decided that the additional exploitation of Kenya's already declining wildlife populations was unsustainable and it banned sales of wildlife meat and products.

So, in sum, is wildlife ranchingcropping feasible? Potentially, yes, given very large upfront investment and recurrent management costs. But only with limited offtakes (see below) Is it profitable? Yes, but to a relatively few beneficiaries, namely, the ranch

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management group, and given that there is a specialised, high-end urban market.

Is it sustainable? Potentially yes, given low offtakes commensurate with natural predation (and assuming natural predators in area have been killed off).

Can wildlife cropping and wildlife viewing co-exist on the same landscape?

No: negative public relations among the majority of wildlife-viewing visitors and negative impacts on remaining animals.

Can wildlife replace livestock as protein for a high-density (nonsubsistence) community? No (that’s why we invented cattle, sheep and goats).

Is it ethical? Glad you asked -depends on your world view. The authors would say, no. But there are many who still maintain Man’s dominion over the beasts of the field, which brings us to hunting.

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Wildlife viewing in Namibia?

CAN WE SERIOUSLY BE TALKING ABOUT REINSTATING HUNTING AFTER KENYA HAS HELD THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL HIGH GROUND FOR OVER FORTY YEARS? SPORT HUNTING Can we seriously be talking about reinstating hunting after Kenya has held the intellectual and moral high ground on the subject for over 40 years? It seems so. Although the GoK charge to a 2018 Taskforce on Wildlife Utilisation reiterated that “Kenya has banned sport hunting and there is no intention in opening this debate“, we continue to hear complaints by landowners that they should be able to sell the animals on their properties to rich folks for sport. So let’s spend a few more lines dealing with this anachronism.

Several old refrains are usually dragged out when defending so-called sport hunting, ranging from economics to sex.

There would be no protected areas today if it weren’t for hunters.

Indeed, many protected ecosystems today have a hunting block history, since hunting lobbies kept them unoccupied and protected. But so what?

Hunters had no interest in conserving natural ecosystems, only in preserving a plenitude of suitable targets, usually achieved from a position of dominion 20 SWARA JANUARY - MARCH 2019

over acquired lands and to the exclusion of disenfranchised local people. Hardly a noble heritage and irrelevant as a justification of hunting today. You might as well argue for bringing back slavery (itself enmeshed with the colonial ivory trade).

Hunting brings much-needed revenue to poverty-stricken communities and puts money back into conservation.

We’d really like to see the figures.

From what we can tell, the fees from sport hunting bring profits to a small group of middlemen, employment for a proportionately small cadre of support staff, and an occasional carcass for the “grateful natives”. Indeed, some hunting concession enterprises in Namibia, much touted as a showcase of sustainable utilisation, seem to be retooling for wildlife-viewing-based tourism. Have a look at Safarihoek Etosha Heights Lodge, for example (http://etoshaheights.com/page/ safarihoek-lodge/). And, closer to home, read the excellent account of a truly successful Kenya communitybased wildlife-viewing conservationist,

Campi ya Kanzi’s Luca Belpietro, a man who comes from a family of big game hunters (https://maasai.com/zebrasteaks-to-protect-wildlife-and/).

Sport hunting targets animals that are past their prime who have fulfilled their reproductive role.

Total nonsense. Selective sport hunting actually weakens populations for two main reasons. First, trophy hunters by definition aim for trophies, prime animals with big tusks or black manes.

Removing such animals effectively creates a negative selection for favourable features. In the 1980s, Botswana banned elephant trophy hunting because they recorded declining tusk weights, a trend that is seen throughout African elephant populations where ivory poachers have exerted similar negative pressures. Secondly, the argument demonstrates ignorance of recent research demonstrating, for example, that old bull elephants contribute disproportionally to the gene pool, as canny females prefer males who have favourable genes for longevity, size and strength.

Hunting is not about killing, it’s about being close to nature in the great outdoors.

Surely being one with nature and even the thrill of the stalk is achieved by the millions of visitors who come to wildlands and protected areas for

OPINION

ecotourism without the need for a kill.

We can tell you from experience that there’s nothing more thrilling than quietly approaching close enough to an elephant to get a good ID photo.

Hunting, if successful, by definition ends with a kill.

that lights up during hunting. The more sinister and accurate sex-hunting analogy is the apparent pleasure some take in dominating ‘lesser’ creatures, and the equally-well researched dark realm of sadism and compensation for feelings of sexual inadequacy.

Denying sport hunting is like denying recreational sex.

A naive analogy between hunting and ‘recreational’ sex was advanced by Peter Low’s rhetorical wondering in a Swara (Oct-Dec 2016) op-ed, “…whether such conservationists also believe that it is morally wrong and unacceptable for individuals to engage in sexual activity unless for purposes of procreation.” You missed the point, Peter. The pleasure of sex has a well-researched evolutionary basis in mate-selection, pair-bonding, and the like. Those functions persist.

But there is little if any survival value remaining in the deep-brain arousal

Although some decades have passed since the last consumptive utilisation experiment in Kenya, few of the fundamental drivers have changed.

Rainfall is as unpredictable in semi-arid ecosystems; wild herbivore populations remain tied to inter-annual fluctuations in food and water supply without the capacity for extraordinary offtake we have bred into domestic stock over millennia; and markets remain capricious and unreliable.

What has changed drastically is the absolute numbers of herbivores ‘on offer’. Wildlife populations have been

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slashed through poaching and habitat alienation by up to 70 per cent since the publication of the KWMP Terminal Report in 1980.

Simply put, the resource base upon which cropping is being premised today is far diminished from that of four decades ago when the sustainability of cropping was already so highly questionable that cropping schemes were shelved.

All of these strands combine to predict the likely failure of a sustainable consumptive utilisation regime today -economically, ecologically, and ethically.

What is needed are comprehensive semi-arid ecosystem and wildlife population rescue programmes based on non-consumptive, community-based enterprises that tap equitably into the huge revenue streams from Kenya’s wildlife-viewing tourism industry.

Anything else is whetting the knife for a last go at the golden wild goose.

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