Post by FWS on Jul 3, 2014 21:22:24 GMT -6
Blame War, Not Safaris
By LOUISA LOMBARD
New York Times
JUNE 29, 2014
Safari hunting strikes many people as distasteful in the best of times, and during a conflict, as morally outrageous. The Central African Republic is at war again, and two loose-knit coalitions — one mostly Muslim, the other mostly Christian — are massacring each other. Yet the trophy hunting goes on. A few intrepid foreigners are traveling to the eastern parts of the republic to kill Lord Derby Eland, the largest antelope in Africa, and its shy forest cousin, the bongo.
Earlier this month, Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, tweeted at a local safari operator: “No, it is not OK for ignorant US hunters 2 come hunt 4 sport in #CARcrisis at time its people r hunted w hate.” And then: “Plus US hunters you hosted left #CARcrisis w nice trophies & no more knowledge re horror unfolding, shameful.”
A couple of days earlier, Jon Lee Anderson, a New Yorker staff writer then in the Central African Republic, had snapped a picture of two unsuspecting hunters chatting in an airport lounge and tweeted: “#CARcrisis Amidst 1 of Africa’s worst humanitarian crises, hunters come to kill animals x fun. Here’s a few going home.”
Mr. Bouckaert’s recent work has been invaluable in bringing the world a nuanced picture of the country’s horrible conflict. But he and other concerned parties are missing the mark when they shame safari hunters and their hosts: They are irrelevant to the war, and by staying through it they are providing a rare source of livelihood to people long neglected by the central government and now largely abandoned by everyone else.
Many liberal Westerners think of trophy hunting as an anachronism — a throwback to a Hemingway vision of Africa as a playground for white foreigners with guns. The history of safaris in the Central African Republic does bear the mark of colonial-era racial inequalities, and it is marred by smuggling and the poor enforcement of conservation rules. But in its current, regulated form, the sport is helping to maintain islands of relative peace in remote parts of the country.
Beginning in the late 1970s, conflict, as well as desertification, in Chad and Sudan, drove cattle herders into eastern Central African Republic. Their livestock then competed with the local wildlife for water and grazing land. When global prices for ivory rose, armed poachers invaded the savannas and killed off elephants, driving safari business away.
Hunting lodges have been looted by the various rebels who have sought refuge or emerged in the region over the past decade. The few remaining safari operators are looking for new ways to run their businesses.
During an earlier wave of rebellion in 2006-7, hunters and local hunting councils took it upon themselves to distribute hunting tax revenue directly to local communities. More recently, hunters were among the founders of the Chinko Project, which will turn a former hunting ground into a protected area and fund human development. (I serve as an unpaid adviser to the project.)
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Safari operators are motivated by profit, of course, but even though a two-week trip can cost a tourist more than $30,000, running safaris is not especially lucrative. Lodge managers often do this work because they feel loyal to the country, where some of them grew up, and to the 250 or so locals each lodge employs. Still, the conditions are difficult. In 2002, there were 14 safari lodges in operation. Today, there are two.
Directing anger at safari operators and Western hunters who kill a couple of animals a month is a waste of good outrage. Recent campaigns about blood diamonds and conflict minerals have exposed how economic activity can cause or worsen war. Not so with the safari industry in the Central African Republic.
Trophy-hunting reflects inequalities in money and mobility, and sometimes also insensitivity to conservation practices or local politics. But by pointing a finger at hunters, activists and observers like Mr. Bouckaert and Mr. Anderson are playing the old game of making a few ignorant white people out to be more meaningful or worthy of outrage than they are. The white faces stand out amid the black ones, even though the crisis in the Central African Republic, like so many issues in Africa, is not about white people at all. And attention paid to a few white hunters is at best a distraction from the more important matter of examining the roots of the crisis of political legitimacy that is ripping the country apart.
When the foreign aid workers in the Central African Republic pack up their NGO T-shirts and laptops and fly away to the next emergency, a few safari-lodge operators and their employees will stay behind. It would be a pity if their fragile industry collapsed, not because of the war itself but because of the misdirected criticism of Westerners trying to help.
Louisa Lombard is a postdoctoral fellow in natural resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
To the Editor:
Re “Blame War, Not Safaris,” by Louisa Lombard (Op-Ed, June 30):
A positive light — entirely undeserving — is shed on the blood-soaked businesses of canned hunts and safaris in Africa.
Hunting is an act against nature with devastating, far-reaching consequences to entire species, individual animals and their family groups. African antelopes are endangered, yet wealthy trophy hunters spend small fortunes massacring these magnificent animals. It’s up to animal charities to ensure legal protections for these animals and their habitat, and to shield them from the hunters who would make them extinct.
Portraying such grotesque, selfish actions as responsible for maintaining areas of “relative peace” in Africa is to deny the fact that hunting itself is an act of violence that needs to be snuffed out across the globe.
EDITA BIRNKRANT
Campaigns Director
Friends of Animals
New York, June 30, 2014
To the Editor:
The history of conservation in Kenya sheds light on the role of high-paying trophy hunters in preserving African wildlife. Hunting was stopped in Kenya in 1977, the same year that countrywide aerial wildlife counts were started by the Canadian government. These continue to the present, and indicate a more than 70 percent decline in wild animals since the end of trophy hunting. The edible wildlife has been snared and eaten, and problematic animals like lions have been poisoned.
This has occurred because wild animals outside of parks are nothing but an expensive nuisance to the impoverished people whose lands they share, and because the government has no reason to protect animals that earn no one any money. Legal protection in the absence of effective enforcement has been a disaster for the wildlife of Kenya.
The failure of strict protectionism soon became evident as meat poaching skyrocketed after the hunting ban, because the professional hunters were no longer running anti-poaching operations. The ban has been maintained for decades through the financial influence of American and British animal rights organizations, which appear willing to sacrifice whole species to the poachers in order to save a few old males from being shot as trophies.
Today, most of Kenya no longer has enough wildlife to even contemplate a resumption of hunting for conservation.
LAURENCE FRANK
Berkeley, Calif., June 30, 2014
The writer is director of the Kenya-based conservation group Living With Lions, and a research associate with the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California.
By LOUISA LOMBARD
New York Times
JUNE 29, 2014
Safari hunting strikes many people as distasteful in the best of times, and during a conflict, as morally outrageous. The Central African Republic is at war again, and two loose-knit coalitions — one mostly Muslim, the other mostly Christian — are massacring each other. Yet the trophy hunting goes on. A few intrepid foreigners are traveling to the eastern parts of the republic to kill Lord Derby Eland, the largest antelope in Africa, and its shy forest cousin, the bongo.
Earlier this month, Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, tweeted at a local safari operator: “No, it is not OK for ignorant US hunters 2 come hunt 4 sport in #CARcrisis at time its people r hunted w hate.” And then: “Plus US hunters you hosted left #CARcrisis w nice trophies & no more knowledge re horror unfolding, shameful.”
A couple of days earlier, Jon Lee Anderson, a New Yorker staff writer then in the Central African Republic, had snapped a picture of two unsuspecting hunters chatting in an airport lounge and tweeted: “#CARcrisis Amidst 1 of Africa’s worst humanitarian crises, hunters come to kill animals x fun. Here’s a few going home.”
Mr. Bouckaert’s recent work has been invaluable in bringing the world a nuanced picture of the country’s horrible conflict. But he and other concerned parties are missing the mark when they shame safari hunters and their hosts: They are irrelevant to the war, and by staying through it they are providing a rare source of livelihood to people long neglected by the central government and now largely abandoned by everyone else.
Many liberal Westerners think of trophy hunting as an anachronism — a throwback to a Hemingway vision of Africa as a playground for white foreigners with guns. The history of safaris in the Central African Republic does bear the mark of colonial-era racial inequalities, and it is marred by smuggling and the poor enforcement of conservation rules. But in its current, regulated form, the sport is helping to maintain islands of relative peace in remote parts of the country.
Beginning in the late 1970s, conflict, as well as desertification, in Chad and Sudan, drove cattle herders into eastern Central African Republic. Their livestock then competed with the local wildlife for water and grazing land. When global prices for ivory rose, armed poachers invaded the savannas and killed off elephants, driving safari business away.
Hunting lodges have been looted by the various rebels who have sought refuge or emerged in the region over the past decade. The few remaining safari operators are looking for new ways to run their businesses.
During an earlier wave of rebellion in 2006-7, hunters and local hunting councils took it upon themselves to distribute hunting tax revenue directly to local communities. More recently, hunters were among the founders of the Chinko Project, which will turn a former hunting ground into a protected area and fund human development. (I serve as an unpaid adviser to the project.)
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Safari operators are motivated by profit, of course, but even though a two-week trip can cost a tourist more than $30,000, running safaris is not especially lucrative. Lodge managers often do this work because they feel loyal to the country, where some of them grew up, and to the 250 or so locals each lodge employs. Still, the conditions are difficult. In 2002, there were 14 safari lodges in operation. Today, there are two.
Directing anger at safari operators and Western hunters who kill a couple of animals a month is a waste of good outrage. Recent campaigns about blood diamonds and conflict minerals have exposed how economic activity can cause or worsen war. Not so with the safari industry in the Central African Republic.
Trophy-hunting reflects inequalities in money and mobility, and sometimes also insensitivity to conservation practices or local politics. But by pointing a finger at hunters, activists and observers like Mr. Bouckaert and Mr. Anderson are playing the old game of making a few ignorant white people out to be more meaningful or worthy of outrage than they are. The white faces stand out amid the black ones, even though the crisis in the Central African Republic, like so many issues in Africa, is not about white people at all. And attention paid to a few white hunters is at best a distraction from the more important matter of examining the roots of the crisis of political legitimacy that is ripping the country apart.
When the foreign aid workers in the Central African Republic pack up their NGO T-shirts and laptops and fly away to the next emergency, a few safari-lodge operators and their employees will stay behind. It would be a pity if their fragile industry collapsed, not because of the war itself but because of the misdirected criticism of Westerners trying to help.
Louisa Lombard is a postdoctoral fellow in natural resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
To the Editor:
Re “Blame War, Not Safaris,” by Louisa Lombard (Op-Ed, June 30):
A positive light — entirely undeserving — is shed on the blood-soaked businesses of canned hunts and safaris in Africa.
Hunting is an act against nature with devastating, far-reaching consequences to entire species, individual animals and their family groups. African antelopes are endangered, yet wealthy trophy hunters spend small fortunes massacring these magnificent animals. It’s up to animal charities to ensure legal protections for these animals and their habitat, and to shield them from the hunters who would make them extinct.
Portraying such grotesque, selfish actions as responsible for maintaining areas of “relative peace” in Africa is to deny the fact that hunting itself is an act of violence that needs to be snuffed out across the globe.
EDITA BIRNKRANT
Campaigns Director
Friends of Animals
New York, June 30, 2014
To the Editor:
The history of conservation in Kenya sheds light on the role of high-paying trophy hunters in preserving African wildlife. Hunting was stopped in Kenya in 1977, the same year that countrywide aerial wildlife counts were started by the Canadian government. These continue to the present, and indicate a more than 70 percent decline in wild animals since the end of trophy hunting. The edible wildlife has been snared and eaten, and problematic animals like lions have been poisoned.
This has occurred because wild animals outside of parks are nothing but an expensive nuisance to the impoverished people whose lands they share, and because the government has no reason to protect animals that earn no one any money. Legal protection in the absence of effective enforcement has been a disaster for the wildlife of Kenya.
The failure of strict protectionism soon became evident as meat poaching skyrocketed after the hunting ban, because the professional hunters were no longer running anti-poaching operations. The ban has been maintained for decades through the financial influence of American and British animal rights organizations, which appear willing to sacrifice whole species to the poachers in order to save a few old males from being shot as trophies.
Today, most of Kenya no longer has enough wildlife to even contemplate a resumption of hunting for conservation.
LAURENCE FRANK
Berkeley, Calif., June 30, 2014
The writer is director of the Kenya-based conservation group Living With Lions, and a research associate with the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California.