The role of hunting in African conservation

One of great accusations used by those opposed to shooting and hunting is that people who enjoy these pastimes don’t care about animals or nature. Of course, as you certainly don’t need telling, this could not be further from the truth. In reality, those who engage in these activities interact with nature and animals far more often than is probably the case for their opponents, and usually harbour a deep-seated respect and love for the natural world.

 

In the UK, our landscape and countryside has been shaped by shooting and hunting. The New Forest, Epping Forest, the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest, some of the largest nature reserves in the UK, were originally created as royal hunting preserves, while shooting drives a huge amount of largely voluntary conservation work on privately owned land. Research has shown that farmland where the owner participates in shooting has a far higher coverage of woodland than land where the owner does not, and it is widely accepted that shooting provides incentives for landowners to conserve key habitats and the knock-on impacts for at risk species - especially ground-nesting birds - are also widely recognised. In the USA, waning interest in hunting means there is less money available for conservation and the Fish and Wildlife Departments are seriously worried.

 

READ MORE: Are the woods where you shoot well managed?

Nowhere is the importance of hunting to conservation as great, nor as controversial, as it is in Africa. The continent is home to some of the most iconic species in the world, beloved of hunters and non-hunters alike, but also to some of the most endangered. Recent years have seen an increased pressure on big game or safari hunting in particular, with social media storms creating controversy, and governments imposing and then repealing hunting bans. Yet hunting in Africa serves an important purpose.

 

 

Before university I spent a couple of months volunteering on a game reserve in the Eastern Cape - reclaimed from overgrazed farmland - and frequently heard the rangers express the view that without hunting, many of the private reserves would simply revert to farmland. As in the UK, communities in remote areas need an income from their land, and without hunting, the most profit is to be made from farming - usually livestock, not - as some might think - from photo safaris. This frequently leads to overgrazing and the gradual decline of the environment. I recall long, sweaty hours spent carrying out anti-erosion work, filling in gullies carved out by water that would ordinarily soak into the ground, but which was, owing to a lack of ground cover, simply cascading down the hillsides.

Hunting brings in serious money - a single hunter may part with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds on a trip to Africa, and in many areas a proportion of hunting revenue goes straight to local communities. These are frequently communities that simply would not benefit from photo-tourism as they are too remote and hard to access for most tourists. Many hunting concessions are created in collaboration with local villagers in these remote areas.

 

 

One such project is the one carried out by Robin Hurt Safaris in Tanzania, a Professional Hunter of more than 50 years standing who has written extensively about the benefits to local communities and wildlife brought by well-managed hunting operations. The Villager Benefits Scheme in the Burko, Rungwa, Luganzo and Mlele areas see Robin working with local communities who are living with wild animals on a day to day basis and to ensure that they get a proper financial benefit from conserving wildlife, which helps to fund a wide range of benefits from schools and medical facilities to clean water projects. They also provide employment for many local people, both as part of the hunting team and in camp.

And then there is the question of poaching. There is a tendency among those opposed to shooting and hunting to lump poachers and hunters together, but the reality is that they are a world apart. Poaching is indiscriminate, with no concept of ‘a fair chase’. Poachers will use any means necessary to bring down their target, be that snares or other kinds of trap, or firearms. A poacher cares not which animal he kills, be it female in calf, young, male, big or small - he only cares that he kills. Conversely, professional hunting operations are not only selective in the animals that they take, but abide by the ‘rules of the chase’: the quarry should have the chance to escape and it should be a fair contest - the skills of the stalker against the natural wiles, instincts and senses of the animal.

 

 

Operations like Robin Hurt’s frequently fund anti-poaching teams, with back-up support (poachers are frequently as careless of human life as they are of animal life), vehicles and training. What’s more, many a hunting guide is that rarest of things, a poacher turned gamekeeper.

 

READ MORE: A Keeper's Diary

All around the world, hunters and hunting businesses are engaged in projects seeking to undo the damage caused by poaching. In Namibia, Robin and his wife Pauline have set up the “Habitat for Rhino” project. They use their own money and donations from their hunter-conservationist friends and clients to transport white rhino from areas where they are under threat from poaching to more secure areas. Having started with five white rhino, there are now nine, and several pregnant females. In addition to this, the project funds an anti-poaching team in order to keep them safe.

 

The final aspect of safari hunting that is frequently overlooked is its role in population management. In a world where human populations are growing and human activity is increasingly bumping up against the natural world, and conflict is inevitable. In a recent article for Fieldsports Magazine Robin Hurt cited the impact of increasing numbers of large herbivores on the ever decreasing area of available land - overgrazing, habitat destruction, and a lack of food - leading to both die-offs in drought years and conflict with farmers, whose crops become the target of these starving animals. Selective, managed hunting can help to maintain these populations of large herbivores, protecting livelihoods at the same time.

 

 

For those opposed to hunting, these can be hard facts to swallow. Some of the blame for this must be laid at the door of those ill-advised hunters who post images of their ‘trophy’ on social media. Indeed, Robin Hurt has frequently expressed his distaste for the term ‘trophy hunting’ and on this I would agree with him. A more proper term would be ‘conservation hunting’, for the real motivation of any true gun or stalker is not the trophy, but a deep-seated love of nature. As Hurt wrote: “The trophy is not the principal reason to hunt; in fact, the trophy - though of value to the hunter - should be of least importance to the hunt. It’s about being in the bush close to nature, the spirit of adventure, stalking and tracking game up close and on foot, the campfire camaraderie[...] the horns or tusks from an old male, worn down with age, are simply an earned memento of all that.”