http://allafrica.com/stories/201112150732.html


Trophy Hunting 'Lucrative' Form of Land Utilisation - Lamprecht
15 December 2011



Trophy hunting employs more people and pays better salaries than any other form of commercial, agricultural or communal conservancy land utilisation in Namibia, according to professional hunters.

An executive member of the Namibia Professional Hunting Association (NAPHA), Marina Lamprecht, made this statement on Monday after a new trophy record was recorded with the shooting of a 69-kilogramme cheetah by South African hunter Johan van der Westhuizen.

Local professional hunter Elaine Coetzee of CEC Safaris accompanied Van der Westhuizen, who shot the endangered animal on a farm near Outjo on April 22 2011.

International hunting organisation Safari Club International only recently confirmed the new record, saying that it was the biggest cheetah to be hunted worldwide to date.

The incident caused outrage, with readers complaining about the killing after a photo was published on a local daily newspaper's front page.

"Our wildlife is a natural resource which, if managed properly and utilised sustainably through fee-based trophy-hunting, has the potential to develop into one of our country's most valuable renewable assets.

"We should recognise that as we take on the many challenges of our time in Africa, including poverty, education and land reform, our focus increasingly must be on the most effective utilisation of land for the direct benefit of human beings," Lamprecht responded.

Lamprecht said the results of the past four decades have proven that selective, ethical and sustainable trophy hunting is one of the most lucrative forms of land utilisation, as well as a great conservation tool in Namibia.

Namibia has the largest remaining number of free-ranging cheetahs in the world, 90 per cent of which are found outside protected areas on commercial farms.


The country is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and has a quota to export 150 cheetahs per year.

The most recent statistics indicate that approximately 50 per cent of that quota is currently utilised by trophy hunters.

Lamprecht said the ability to utilise cheetahs sustainably, just like any other natural living resource, aids conservation efforts by giving landowners and communal conservancy members economic incentives to preserve, rather than reduce, the cheetah population.

"Trophy hunters invest huge amounts of money in wildlife conservation, as it is in their own best interest that all species are protected for future generations," she added.

Trophy hunting employs more people and pays better salaries than any other form of commercial, agricultural or communal conservancy land utilisation in Namibia, according to professional hunters.

And, we need to keep it that way!

It's also far-and-away the least environmentally destructive form of land use ... something you can tell your environmentalist friends.

And when a crop farm or cattle ranch is converted to a hunting ranch, the land is restored to virtually complete biodiversity.

Hunting ranch conversions represent the most sugnificant marraige of economic, environmental and cultural interests in history.