Gerald Winegrad: Must Africa’s wildlife be killed to conserve them?
|COMMENTARY
Gerald Winegrad, Capital Gazette
September 6, 2024
See link
https://www.capitalgazette.com/2024/09/06/africa-wildlife-conservation-namibia-elephants/
for photos.
Last week, startling news broke that Namibia authorized the slaughter of
723 wild animals, mostly in protected national parks. Professional and
trophy hunters are shooting 83 endangered elephants, 300 zebras, 30 hippos,
60 African buffalos, 50 impalas, 100 wildebeest and 100 elands, the world’s
largest antelope.
Already 125,388 pounds of meat from 157 wild animals have been provided for
food for a few of the 1.4 million Namibian people acutely threatened by
food and water shortages brought on by severe drought linked to global
warming. More than half of Namibia’s 2.6 million residents face food and
water deprivation with 84% of Namibia’s food resources exhausted. This
southwestern African nation borders the Atlantic Ocean and is twice the
size of California with its 39 million people.
The current drought is devastating southern African nations, the worst in
100 years, and affects more than 30 million people. Wildlife is dying.
Namibia decided to cull animals for food and contends it will lessen
dangerous encounters between wildlife and humans as they compete for scarce
water and vegetation. Usually, animals would migrate in cases of severe
drought, but as the drought spreads there is limited area for migration.
Namibia and many other African countries allow trophy hunting and culling
of wildlife. Namibia is part of the southern conservation reserve that
includes four other southern African countries. This region includes the
world’s largest population of African savanna elephants, which are
endangered and whose population has decreased by 60% over the last 50
years. In 1500, an estimated 25 million elephants roamed Africa, now only
415,000 remain.
The southern reserve hosts 227,000 elephants with 21,090 in Namibia, having
stabilized after tripling since colonization ended in 1990. Extreme drought
is killing hundreds of elephants and poaching is still a problem.
What is alarming for wildlife is that Namibia is generally regarded as a
good steward of its wildlife with the lowest population density of any
country except Greenland and Mongolia. The low density is linked to 81% of
its land being classified as desert, one of the most desert-dominated
countries in the world.
The African continent is projected to grow by a billion people (67%) by
2050, from 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion. Namibia is expected to grow by 46%,
reaching 3.8 million by 2050. The haunting question is: How can such huge
increases in human numbers occur in so many impoverished nations without
further decimation of wildlife populations?
Will elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, lions, leopards, cheetahs,
oryxes, zebras and other African critters be driven to extinction? Or will
they be fenced into ecological islands of national parks and private game
preserves for the rich to hunt and be raised as farm animals for human
consumption? Will poaching for bush meat, ivory and other animal parts
accelerate into the future as more people seek food and income? Will
global-warming-fueled droughts and other weather events cause further
declines?
Poaching for ivory kills 20,000 African elephants a year. Others die from
conflicts with humans. Habitat loss and fragmentation from human population
expansion have left just 10% of elephant habitats intact.
Namibia wisely established 50 communal conservancies covering 29 million
acres of local tribal lands resulting in enhanced wildlife land management
while providing tens of thousands of rural Namibians with much-needed
income. Locals and wildlife benefit from tourism including hunting.
Formerly a German colony, Namibia, like other African colonies, experienced
the Europeans’ ruthless exploitation of wildlife and other resources,
especially ivory.
Now, tourism for wildlife viewing and hunting is a major source of
Namibia’s income and employs nearly 20% of its workforce. This success has
significantly cut ivory poaching and elephants are expanding their range.
Namibian hunting operators are presently allowed to export 93 elephant
bulls per year killed by foreign hunters. The going rate for a 14-day,
single elephant hunt in Namibia was about $80,000. Foreign hunters in
Botswana and Zimbabwe kill about 500 elephants annually, raising millions
of dollars. In South Africa’s Kruger National Park, culled elephants to
reduce herds were trucked to abattoirs that canned the meat for sale in
markets.
Is this the future for our largest land animal on Earth, a species known
and revered by humans since our earliest age?
South Africa has 2,000 wild lions, and hunting of these habituated big cats
bred on private preserves has grown into a $100 million industry, with 200
facilities raising 6,000 lions for easy killing. You can shoot a large
black-maned lion there for $16,950, a large white rhino for $100,000 or a
large elephant for $50,000. These trophies can be sent back to the United
States. Or choose from 58 other animals including giraffes and baboons. If
you have the money, you can kill just about any wild animal.
Local communities benefit from this hunting, frequently receiving the meat
and other parts of the animals and reaping jobs. But this raises the
question: To save wildlife, do we need to kill them?
In my first visit to Africa in 1986, I had to confront this question. I met
with a knowledgeable World Wildlife Fund conservation leader in Nairobi,
Kenya. He pleaded with me to convince WWF officials at the Washington,
D.C., headquarters of the need to allow game hunts. He said this was
critical for income for local tribal communities and to incentivize the
conservation of other species sharing habitat with trophy animals. He saw
no hope for saving wildlife otherwise.
I am still conflicted over this reality, but as condemning as it is for our
species, perhaps we have to establish a financial value for elephants and
all African wildlife to save them. In thinking this monetizing wildlife
through, remember that our wealthy resource-rich nation’s record on the
extermination of native wildlife is hardly a model for other countries.
The American bison (buffalo) was wantonly slaughtered, reduced from 60
million to near extinction by 1900. Americans relentlessly killed native
beavers, reducing them from 400 million to 100,000 by 1900, causing the
demise of the well-functioning natural wetland ecosystems beavers helped
create. And there was the near extinction of wolves, grizzly bears and
wolverines in the lower 48 states which are still persecuted. And in 2022
in America, humans killed 24,849 other humans.
With Namibia’s communal conservancies allowing locals to financially
benefit from hunting and tourism, poaching has declined dramatically and
there are now restored populations of numerous species. It seems the health
of wildlife populations and prosperity of local communities are
inextricably linked.
We are facing a biological annihilation, a frightening assault on
biodiversity termed The Sixth Great Extinction — the only one brought on by
humans. About 25% of all animal and plant species are threatened — 1
million species face extinction without rapid, greatly intensified efforts.
Large mammals in African protected areas declined by 60% between 1970 and
2005. Trophy hunting today, especially of the so-called big five in Africa
(elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and Cape buffalo), brings with it a set of
moral and financial questions. Wild game is the continent’s version of
crude oil — and it could run out someday.
We have a compelling moral duty to make wise choices and do all within our
powers to save other species.
Gerald Winegrad represented the greater Annapolis area as a Democrat in the
Maryland House of Delegates and Senate for 16 years. Contact him at
gwwabc@comcast.net.
https://www.capitalgazette.com/2024/09/06/africa-wildlife-conservation-namibia-elephants/