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Hunting debate splits Kenya's wildlife community By Daniel Wallis
Thu Apr 19, 8:41 AM ET



NAIROBI (Reuters) - A controversial proposal to help save Kenya's wildlife by scrapping a 30-year ban on sport hunting split delegates at a conference in the east African nation on Thursday.

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Tens of thousands of tourists flock to Kenya each year to see lions, leopards, elephants, wildebeest and other wildlife roaming the parks and reserves. But animal numbers have fallen by at least two-thirds over the last three decades, and experts blame poaching plus human destruction of their habitats.

Those backing sport hunting say it would preserve wildlife by encouraging better management and earning big money that could be ploughed back into conservation. It would also bring Kenya into line with neighbors Uganda and Tanzania, and with South Africa, which all profit from restricted hunting.

Opponents have denounced any moves to re-introduce the blood sport and accused elitist hunters of colluding with wealthy local landowners.

"It is such an emotional issue right now," Sarah Macharia, a Kenyan environmental consultant, told Reuters at the meeting.

"Every time they try to count our animals there are fewer and fewer. I am against hunting because we don't have the capacity to enforce any rules on it. Maybe later, but not now."

Last year, Kenya's government appointed a committee to formulate a new wildlife policy. The draft report, completed in February, recommended lifting the ban on hunting, but its publication has been delayed by the wrangling.

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Tempers have flared, and one Kenyan journalist recently protested at the idea of Arab royals and rich Americans, "bored by ordinary living," blasting away at big game while children in rags look on from the doorways of mud huts.

Opponents say locals want a bigger share of tourist revenues from the parks and reserves, which go mostly to the service sector, and compensation for loss of property or crops caused by wildlife -- but not hunting.

Supporters of hunting include not only ranchers and sports hunters themselves, but also some veteran conservationists who have worked in the country for decades.

They say countries like South Africa and Tanzania have prospered hugely, partly because hunters spend thousands of dollars, many times more than regular tourists, and partly because they have experienced an increase in animal numbers.

Mike Norton-Griffiths, an expert on the economics of wildlife management, says natural habitats in Kenya are being destroyed by landowners because the returns from agriculture are currently much higher than from wildlife.

Money-making activities like selling animals, culling locally abundant populations, marketing trophies and -- most valuable of all -- sport hunting, should be allowed, he says.

Well-funded foreign animal welfare groups, mostly based in the United States, have muddied the debate, and even "subverted democracy," in Kenya, he says.

These groups seem determined to make sure hunting never returns, apparently regardless of whether this leads to further falls in wildlife numbers or continued rural poverty, he says.

"If they succeed in derailing the wildlife policy review, the decline in the country's wildlife will carry inexorably on," he wrote in the magazine New Scientist last month.

"That would hardly be a victory for conservation."

[kevin davis]

once again, a triumph of emotion over reality and soundly based decision making, leving the poor ever poorer, and the rich out of touch and out of reach. the classic african pattern again displayed. I casn see a kenya in the future importing animals from texas to restock the serengeti after they have been p[oached to extinction.

[ChesterGolf]

Kevin, I think you have touched on a good point. Many people link poaching to legal hunting and fire us all in the same group. Most of these anti groups are as opposed to firearms as they are to hunting and use the pouching dark view to fuel their own cause: to ban all hunting and guns period.

[kevin davis]

this article, or one like it is featured on Yahoo top news today. The two sides are about the same as the two sides of the gun control debate, meaning that no realistic or consensus forming talks are possible, no quarter will be given. The yahoo article quotes a government official as saying that the hunting ban will not be lifted, no matter what the expert panel says. So why have the panel meet if there will be no improvement in the situation. What happened to the voice of the people? Why not let each communal area decide for itself? (too much central control in Africa, holdover from the socialist past/present) I have a feeling that official is being paid by the anti-hunting side. I am amazed at how much influence these anti hunting groups can wield. It is Eurocolonialism all over again for the Kenyans, but this time thru monetary threats, rather than outright landgrabs as before. The IAFW would do better to provide free birth control clinics than an anti hunting ban if they truly wanted to help the PEOPLE of Kenya, and not just the animals, but then the people are the problem, are'nt they? :](*,)