The CIC-Newsletter 2011/2    

CIC at IWA-OutdoorClassics in Nürnberg

Hunting - a Major Conservation Tool in the 21st Century

"Sustainable hunting will continue to be a major conservation tool in the 21st century. It conserves wildlife populations and biodiversity in general, whereas hunting bans can speed up extinction," said the President of the CIC Tropical Game Commission, Dr. Rolf D. Baldus, at a WFSA conference during the international IWA-Outdoors Classic trade fair in Nürnberg. The conference on "Hunting and Sportshooting in the 21st Century" was organized by the "World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities" (WFSA). The WFSA represents over one hundred million sport shooters from all around the world.

There is no reason for hunters to be defensive or to hide their passion. The high expenditures of hunters all over the world and their investments into the conservation of natural habitats are major and often critical contributions to maintain biodiversity. At the same time this saves the taxpayers millions of dollars or €uros, which they otherwise would have to spend for the same purposes. The income hunters provide for landowners serves as a powerful economic incentive for the conservation of nature.

"Total protection of wildlife and hunting bans often achieve the opposite,” Dr. Baldus said, “as they remove the economic value of wildlife, and something without value is defencelessly doomed to decline and in final consequence to extinction."

Sustainable lion hunting supports lion conservation

The CIC is, therefore, very concerned about the present effort of a coalition of anti-hunting and animal rights groups to list the African lion under the US Endangered Species Act. This would outlaw the import of lion trophies into the USA. All large cats, which have been thus formally protected for decades are indeed more and more endangered: the tiger, the snow leopard and the jaguar. In Kenya the lion has not been legally hunted for over 30 years and during that period, the lion population size has crashed to roughly about 10% of the neighbouring Tanzanian lion population, which has been hunted all along the same period! Bans clearly not only do not work, but accelerate the extinction of species.

Wild lion populations outside national parks only have a future if rural people see a direct benefit of living with lions. Official and controlled hunting encourages the lion range states to leave hunting blocks as wilderness and refrain from converting them into pastoral rangeland and agricultural land with little biodiversity left. Banning lion trophy hunting or creating barriers for hunters to take home legally obtained trophies removes the economic as well as management and law enforcement incentives that are necessary for conservation. These counter balances were removed in Kenya that downgraded the lion to vermin, and led poor rural herdsmen to poison lions with easily obtainable insecticides. It is difficult to prevent retaliatory killings when livelihood strategies are threatened: the law is reluctant to impose stiff sentences that compromise poverty alleviation. Conservation authorities cannot defend their justification to conserve lions in such circumstances.

It is a disgrace to observe how the animal welfare organisations follow a neo-colonialist approach. They want to force sovereign African nations and poor rural people to adopt their Disneyland-like version of African nature. Banning lion hunting is a first step to terminate all official hunting in Africa. It aims at depriving developing countries and rural communities from earning necessary revenues from biodiversity. This is a direct violation of the main principles of the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (CBD). The CIC is confident that the United States will not follow this ill-conceived petition of the animal rights organizations.

During the conference, the WFSA presented their "Sports Shooting Ambassadors Awards" to the Namibian Minister of Environment and Tourism, Hon. Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, and Ms. Marina Lamprecht of the Namibia Professional Hunting Association (NAPHA) for their achievements to conserve Namibia's wildlife through hunting tourism.

Namibian Minister: Come to Namibia and hunt

Ms. Nandi-Ndaitwah explained that wildlife has more than tripled in recent years, as hunting tourism encourages landowners to have game on their land. Wildlife has turned from a cost into an asset. This has been the case on farms and ranches, but more importantly many rural communities have formed their conservancies, and the income from wildlife now contributes to their livelihoods. Game is back on land where it became extinct a long time ago. And with the ungulates the predators return. "Namibia is the No. 1 cheetah country in Africa," said the Minister. She condemned all kind of unsustainable and unethical hunting practices and underlined that they are not tolerated in her country. "Come to Namibia and hunt," she encouraged the international hunting community. "By hunting you help Namibia to keep its wildlife for future generations."

The CIC-Newsletter 2011/1    

The CIC-Newsletter 2010/3-4    

The CIC-Newsletter 2010/2    

The CIC-Newsletter 2010/1    

The CIC-Newsletter 2009/4    

CIC begrüßt die Verleihung des Wirtschaftsnobelpreises
an die Professorin Elinor Ostrom

Der Internationale Rat für die Erhaltung des Wildes und der Jagd (CIC) würdigte die Verleihung des Wirtschaftsnobelpreises an Elinor Ostrom als gute Wahl. „Ihre Analysen zur Allmende und zum Gemeinschafts-eigentum an natürlichen Ressourcen zeigen, wie wichtig die auch vom CIC unterstützten Programme zur gemeindeorientierten Wildbewirtschaf-tung in Afrika für die Erhaltung der Wildtiere sind,“ sagte der Präsident der CIC Tropenwildkommission, Dr. Rolf D. Baldus.

Fast überall in Afrika, aber auch in anderen Entwicklungsregionen wie Zentralasien, gilt Wild, wenn es nicht gerade auf Privatland lebt, als öffentliches Gut, von dessen Nutzung niemand ausgeschlossen werden kann. Nutzungsverzichte kommen anderen zugute. Das Ergebnis ist Übernutzung und schließlich Zerstörung der Ressource. Man bezeichnet dies als die „Tragik der Allmende“.

Die Umwelt-Ökonomin Ostrom hat gezeigt, dass Gemeinschaftsgüter dezentral in Selbstverwaltung genutzt werden können, wenn die Nutzer zusammenarbeiten. Menschen kooperieren, wenn sie sehen, dass Einigkeit stark macht und ihnen nützt. Auf diese Weise ist Nachhaltigkeit bei der Nutzung natürlicher Ressourcen erreichbar. Übernutzung ist kein Naturgesetz, sondern kann durch sinnvolle Regelungen und vereinbarte positive wie negative Sanktionen verhindert werden. Ausschlaggebend ist dabei aber, dass die ländliche Bevölkerung entscheiden darf und nicht von Eliten oder Bürokratien dominiert wird.

Im Mittelpunkt der Schutzbemühungen zur Erhaltung der Wildtiere, aber beispielsweise auch der öffentlichen Wälder, in Entwicklungsländern steht heute die Übertragung der Bewirtschaftung des Wildes, aber auch anderer natürlicher Ressourcen an Gemeinden oder Gruppen von Nutzern auf dem Lande. Indem die Kleinbauern vor Ort die Eigentums- oder Nutzungsrechte an den natürlichen Ressourcen bekommen, entsteht ein ökonomischer Anreiz zum Erhalt dieser Ressourcen. Die Nutzung wird nachhaltig. Das Wild lebt zwar immer noch auf der Allmende, aber durch das Eigeninteresse der Nutzer und Absprachen wird der bislang freie Zugang eingeschränkt. Erfolgreiche Beispiele sind die dörflichen Hegegemeinschaften in Namibia und Tansania, das „Campfire Programm“ in Simbabwe oder der Selous-Niassa Korridor (Tansania/Mosambik), der deshalb im letzten Jahr auch mit dem „Markhor Preis“ des CIC für herausragende Leistungen bei der Erhaltung der Biodiversität ausgezeichnet wurde.

Die alternative Privatisierung des Wildes ist in den meisten Ländern Afrikas nicht möglich oder nicht sinnvoll, weil es den Betroffenen vor Ort die Vorteile der Wildnutzung entziehen würde. Der Staat als Ordnungsmacht, auf den der traditionelle Naturschutz meistens setzt, hat bei der Erhaltung des Wildes hingegen fast überall versagt. Treffend heisst die bekannteste Veröffentlichung der frischgebackenen Nobelpreisträgerin deshalb auch „Die Verfassung der Allmende – Jenseits von Markt und Staat.“

Ein nachhaltig betriebener Jagdtourismus, der unmittelbar den Nutzervereinigungen zugute kommt, hat sich als wirtschaftlich rentabelste Form der kommunalen Wildnutzung bei gleichzeitig geringem Naturverbrauch erwiesen, sagte Baldus.

CIC welcomes the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics
to Professor Elinor Ostrom

The International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC) welcomed the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom. „Her analysis of commons and common property of natural resources have shown how important the programs for community-based wildlife management are for the conservation of wildlife in Africa”, said the President of the CIC Tropical Game Commission, Dr. Rolf D. Baldus.

Nearly everywhere in Africa, but also in other development areas like Central Asia, game is – unless it does not live on private property – considered as common property, and no one excluded of its use. An abdication of use benefits others. The result is overexploitation and eventually a destruction of the resources. This is called the “tragedy of the commons”.

Environmental economist Ostrom has shown that community assets can be used locally in self-administration if users work together. People cooperate if they realise that unity makes them strong and is for their benefit. In this way sustainability in the use of natural resources is achievable. Overexploitation is not a natural law, but can be prevented by reasonable regulations and stipulated positive as well as negative sanctions. A crucial factor is that rural communities can decide and are not dominated by elites or bureaucracy.

Today, the core of the efforts in the conservation of wildlife, but also of public forests, is in developing countries to hand over wildlife and natural resources management to local communities or user groups. If local small-scale farmers receive ownership and user rights on natural resources, this creates economical incentives for their conservation. The use becomes sustainable. Wild animals remain common property, but through the own interest of the users and agreements, the open access becomes restricted. Successful examples of community based natural resources management are in Namibia and Tanzania, the “Campfire Program” in Zimbabwe or the Selous-Niassa Wildlife Corridor (Tanzania/Mozambique). Latter received last year the “Markhor Award” from the CIC for its outstanding performance in biodiversity conservation.

The alternative privatization of game is in most African countries not possible or not reasonable, as it dispossesses concerned local people of the benefits arising from wildlife use. The state as authority, upon which the traditional nature protection is often focussing, has failed in case of wildlife conservation in almost all countries. The title of the most well-known paper of the newly awarded Nobelprize-holder is spot on “Governing the commons.The evolution of institutions for collective action."

"Sustainable hunting tourism, which brings benefits to local users, has proved itself to be the economically most cost-effective form of communal wildlife use by low impact on nature at the same time" – said Baldus.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

DELEGATION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION TO ZIMBABWE

November 2009

Zimbabwe's environment under serious threat

This note focuses on the serious current threat to the environment in Zimbabwe. The country's natural heritage is a world asset. Urgent action is needed if irreversible damage is to be avoided. This is a matter not only of national but of international concern. The current dramatic onslaught on the Zimbabwe rhino is testimony of a very serious situation.

Zimbabwe is known worldwide for its natural heritage. The country has been, in the past, at the forefront of developing good practices in the area of wildlife management. It has been demonstrated that wildlife exploitation, in its various forms, is the best economic option for large parts of the country due to their arid or semi-arid nature. The natural heritage of Zimbabwe should be a main driver of the country's strategy to achieve accelerated economic growth.

Zimbabwe's natural assets could provide a basis for the country's sustainable development. These resources, until recently, constituted the foundation for economic growth in the country, through agriculture, the transformation industries based on agricultural products, mining exports and tourism as well as professional hunting. They are today in critical danger, with serious and far reaching negative consequences, especially for rural communities which are more sensitive to the depletion of the country' natural resources. An overview of the state of Zimbabwe's natural resources is annexed.

The fast track land reform programme as was implemented has been a main reason for the Zimbabwe's agricultural and economic collapse, and for the related uncontrolled exploitation of the country's natural resources. Small holder farmers, both from communal and resettled areas, have been forced to use all the available resources at their disposal in an unsustainable manner. The negative impact of the resulting degradation is escalating so rapidly that social, economic and environmental resilience is becoming more and more difficult and costly to maintain.

From an environmental point of view, many specialists argue that a point of no-return is rapidly approaching. Degradation would then become irreversible and the natural capital irremediably lost. Zimbabwe would lose any opportunity to regain its key advantage as regards to tourism.

The magnitude of the crisis calls for immediate action, before a social and environmental catastrophe becomes an irreversible reality.

Since the proper use of natural resources is crucial in relation to sustainable development and poverty reduction, all Zimbabweans must seek to reverse current trends in the depletion of their national assets, and support economic recovery through improved natural resource and environmental management. The new political dispensation in place in Zimbabwe, since February 2009, as a result of the signing of the Global Political Agreement, offers an opportunity to do just that. There is a danger, however, that appropriate resource management policies will be neglected and not recognised as essential in the current economic and political context. But once lost, there will be no going back and many recovery opportunities will disappear forever.

This is particularly true for the wildlife population as can be seen from the eradication of wildlife in many other African countries. Their disappearance, as presently happening to the rhino population in Zimbabwe, will limit the recovery opportunities in general; and, more specifically, will undermine the tourism sector, which was recently of major economic importance accounting for about 10% of the GDP, as well as providing a major source of forex revenue. It is even sadder, considering that Zimbabwe was at the forefront of wildlife management and integration of local communities in the benefits of that industry.

One particularity, and strength, of Zimbabwe is the existence of private wildlife conservancies. They account for 2% of the national territory, but have significant economic potential. Today, conservancies are being badly damaged, as has been the case with the commercial farms. But the consequences of their destruction could be even more significant, due to the irreversibility of environmental degradation.

This need not be the case. Zimbabwe could still regain its place in the forefront of the countries seriously committed to protecting their natural assets and making the best economic use of them. But time is running out as environmental degradation becomes impossible to reverse.

It is of crucial importance that all Zimbabweans unite to address these concerns. It is also essential that the international community mobilises itself to establish a substantive dialogue with the Zimbabwean Government on such matters.

The international community should encourage the adoption of policies designed to protect Zimbabwe's environment and begin a meaningful and concrete dialogue with the international community on these issues.