Good news! The Tanzanian Government and the hunting community there have come to an agreement over 2008 trophy and concession fees. We just confirmed those fees this afternoon with Abdul Kadir Luta Mohammed, Secretary General of TAHOA (Tanzanian Hunting Operators Association).
The increases are significant, but they are not as large as was expected in light of the government's attempt to quadruple or quintuple concession fees this year and hike trophy fees by a similarly large amount. The government, you'll recall, backed down from those 2007 increases last month, settling for a concession fee increase of 50 percent and trophy fee increases of about 15 percent.

Here are some highlights of the 2008 fee increases. We hope to have the complete list of fees soon. When we get them, we will post them to our web site:

.Concession fees, according to the agreement, are set to increase to $27,000. It's unclear why a single figure has been given here, as the government previously proposed an increase to $40,000 for some areas and $50,000 for others. That was up from $10,000 per area in 2006. Clearly, the new fees are an improvement from what was originally proposed, but they are still high. They will drive the cost of a safari to Tanzania quite a bit higher.

.Lion and leopard trophy fees are slated to go up to $4,900 and $3,500 respectively. That's a lot better than the $12,000 that the government originally proposed for 2007.

.Elephant is slated to go up to $7,500 for a 30- to 60-pound elephant; to $12,000 for a 61-to 80-pound elephant; and to $20,000 for an elephant over 80 pounds. This increase is better or worse than the one the government proposed for 2007, depending on the size of the jumbo you take. The original 2007 proposal called for elephant to go to $15,000 irrespective of size.

.Buffalo is slated to go to $1,900, up from $750.

Again, we hope to be able to post the entire 2008 fee schedule soon to our web site. In the meantime, we know there will be howls of protest at these fees from some quarters, but our view is these US dollar increases are probably manageable. It is simply getting more costly to incentivize Africans to leave land in an undeveloped state so we can go hunting. We need to face that reality. Also, as this is written, our January issue is being prepared for mailing, and our lead story deals with the impact of the falling dollar on hunt prices. US hunters who protest these fees need to remember that our currency has fallen more than 47 percent against the Euro in five years, almost 38 percent against the Canadian dollar and 30 percent against the once-lowly Rand. A lot of the pain caused by the above-mentioned price increases are pain we have inflicted on ourselves by not living within our means as a nation. - Don Causey.

I got the same message from Don causey; I didnt like his comment that these increases are "probably workable". They may be workable for him and some other more fortunate folks, they certainly are not for me! Tanz is not the only safari country.

Another in the continuing saga of Don Causey's assurances that "What I assured you of before was wrong, but what I now tell you is right".

For his sake and his magazine (which used to have a great reputation for accuracy), I hope he is finally right... and I never knew the fellow was an economist? I'm glad to hear that China's demand for oil had nothing to do with the fall of the dollar... It's my fault... mea culpa!