World Bank supports hunting

The World Bank’s International Development Association approved a $40 million grant to Mozambique to fund conservation efforts, including strengthening the country’s program of selling the rights to hunt wild animals.
The IDA approved the grant in November 2014 for a project known as MozBio, run by the Mozambican government, which aims to improve revenue collection from tourism in conservation areas. Of the funds, $700,000 is earmarked to help develop sport hunting in the southern African country.
“Hunting, when properly regulated and when revenues are distributed to communities in and around parks, is an important financing tool for governments working on the sustainable management of their parks and natural assets,” Madji Seck, a World Bank spokeswoman in Washington, said.
“Hunting blocks in Mozambique have played the role of protected areas, hosting important fauna and flora that are under very high threat in unprotected zones.”
A study released this week showing that Mozambique’s elephant population has dropped by almost half in five years because of rampant poaching, including in national parks, underscores the urgent need for the country to upgrade its conservation network.
Mozambique estimates its elephant population has dwindled to 10,300 from just over 20,000, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement Tuesday.
Mozambique’s conservation areas consist of seven National Parks, 10 National Reserves, 17 controlled hunting areas and two Community Reserves, according to a World Bank document outlining the funding project. While revenue from tourism to the parks trebled to $3 million in 2013 from the previous year, that’s not enough to finance the areas, according to the bank.
Attempts to stimulate income from tourism by allocating part of the funding to developing hunting could backfire, according to critics of the practice.
“Nothing will turn away tourists faster than knowing that the beautiful and majestic animals they have come to watch might be met with a bullet,” Ashley Fruno, a spokeswoman for animal rights group PETA, said.

Now watch all the brainless idiots like Lionaid go ballistic!

PETA are nothing but eco-terrorists!

Mozambique has very little wildlife based tourism currently that is "non consumptive". A little bit in Gorongosa and the Niassa reserve and that is about it. I think you could safely say that 90%+ of their wildlife tourism is hunting and I don't see that changing for decades to come.

I am posting the written words of Tom Dames, Professional Hunter, as written to the TPHA members on this subject. He has expressed in better words than I could, what I have long believed to be the most instrinsic value of regulated sport hunting as a conservation tool.

Dear Mike,

I thought that this might interest you and others http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.LND.PTLD.ZS as it compares Terrestrial Protected areas for all the countries in the World; with Tanzania at 32.2% (beaten in Africa only by Namibia 43.2% and Zambia 37.8%)

Google puts Tanzania’s 16 National Parks at 42,000 ㎢ (Serengeti 14,736, Ruaha 10,300, Katavi 447, Mikumi 3230 and Tarangire 2850 etc…) plus Ngorongoro Conservation Area at 8288 ㎢ - which brings the total of Tanzania’s Land Area protected by National Parks and NCA to about 5.3%… meaning the remaining 26.9% Terrestrial Protected areas is either Game Reserve or Forest Reserve. (pers comm: I'm pretty sure this figure includes GCA's, WMA's and all hunting blocks)

This essentially means that 5 times as much of the gazetted and protected land area of Tanzania generates its revenue / justifies its existence, at least in part, from Tourist Hunting as opposed to Photographic/ non-consumptive tourism. I am not talking about gross revenue, just what proportion of land area gets protected (or should I say at the very least, set aside) for each “land use” practice.

This doesn’t include Game Controlled Areas, WMA’s, Open Areas etc; which add up to another fairly substantial amount.

What always amazes me is that there seems to be this common theme, even amongst far more open minded people than Ashley Fruno, that photographic tourism and hunting are totally incompatible. Whilst perfectly entitled to her own moral and ethical point of view regarding hunting, Fruno completely misses the point, like many others, when she argues that promoting hunting will somehow damage a country’s photographic or tourist potential.

Surely, if anything, Tanzania, with its flourishing and growing tourist/ photographic sector, and well developed hunting industry, proves otherwise.

What is interesting to point out is that whilst the number of tourists visiting Tanzania each year continues to grow, if one were to look at the actual destinations preferred or visited by tourists, they are essentially the same. New lodges and camps continue to spring up in and around the Serengeti, the Crater, Tarangire, Manyara and all the other choice destinations out there, but there are relatively few new destinations in “remote” or “lesser known” places like Ruaha, Katavi, Mkomazi etc…

And whilst it is perfectly legal and feasible (indeed there are plenty of members here with fingers in both the photographic and hunting sectors) to promote photographic tourism further afield, the truth is that if it was easy or profitable to promote photographic tourism in the remaining 26.9% of the country that isn’t under “National Park’s”, (let alone in the “lesser known National Parks”), then people would be doing, or would have done, just that.

Of course, I am preaching to the converted here, but this is the point that I am always surprised is so overlooked - if Tanzania (or Mozambique, or Zambia or whoever you pick) did not have a hunting industry, how would the government continue to justify the amount of land set aside for wildlife or natural bush?

Would the photographic industry miraculously leap up and fill that void left behind? Would there suddenly be 5 times as many tourists visiting Tanzania and would they all descend on those “far flung, as yet unknown” destinations that the hunting industry currently occupies?

And if the answer to this question is no, of course not, then what sensible suggestions to justify a country’s decision to set aside nearly one third of its land area to wildlife/bush do people like Ashley Fruno propose?

I remember a while back you sent around an article the was based on an IUCN study that stated that “Big Game Hunting in Africa was economically useless” - and I always felt that we were missing the point by trying to justify how much revenue big hunting did actually bring in, rather than trying to push the point the whilst yes, compared to mining, oil and gas extraction, high density housing developments or, for that matter, Omo manufacturing it could be argued that pretty much any similar land use practice (including arable farming, pastoralism etc) on a “per hectare” basis is “economically useless”, BUT that from a Conservation point of view setting land aside for tourist hunting is anything but useless.

The World Conservation Strategy (also put together by the IUCN (https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/WCS-004.pdf)(and essentially the go-to reference document for what constitutes “conservation”) in summary states…

“the Aim of the WCS is to achieve 3 main objectives of living resource conservation:

a) to maintain essential ecological processes and life-support systems...
b) preserve genetic diversity…
c) to ensure the sustainable utilization of species and ecosystems..”

And, in this context, it is much harder to argue with the justification to set aside massive tracts of land to be left as natural, ecologically sound and genetically rich habitat…

And if the revenue to do this comes from hunting, then, until someone comes up with a better idea, so be it.