In The Field

Starting with a bang

I write from windy Port Elizabeth, South Africa, a port city on the Eastern Cape of the country. It is described by some as “the Detroit of South Africa” for its prowess in the manufacturing sector. It is also an embarkation point for those with a yen to commune with large African mammals. Many of these do their communing through the medium of a large gun.

“And you are here to stop that?” queries my cab driver, as we drive by a billboard outside the airport which advertises the reason I am here: the annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology.

The reason this conference is so interesting is that no, the people gathered here from the four corners of the earth are not necessarily interested in stopping that. These scientists do have an agenda, but it is not protecting the lives of individual animals but of whole ecosystems. If hunting dollars can go towards protecting and managing a piece of bio-diverse land, and if the hunting is controlled so that the hunted species are not at overall risk, great. If it keeps land clear from development for the exuberant and beautiful ungulates and felines of Africa, cool.

And there’s lots of money in this kind of hunting. Trophy hunting generates $1 million in revenues for South Africa, according to the Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa (which’s motto is “Conservation Through Hunting”).

The aesthetics of the average conference-goer and the average hunter are clearly distinguishable variations on the theme of “I’m comfortable with dirt and the outdoors” but they rubbed shoulders on the plane in to PE (as the many call it) with ease. There are lots of reasons why the two groups would get along. They both like nature. They both want to see it preserved.

In fact, yesterday a workshop on “conservation hunting” takes a look at the growing trend and examines case studies of where it is has worked and where it hasn’t. The workshop was led by Lee Foote of the University of Alberta who notes in program that “Unfortunately, neither a theoretical basis nor sufficient critical overview of [conservation hunting] has yet been advanced.”

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