TROPHY HUNTING - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 180

Wild Fauna and Flora Protection Bureau of SFA. Unpublished but frequently repeated
policy in Qinghai and Gansu during the 1990s was to allocate 20 percent of those funds to
the national management level, 30 percent to the provincial management level, 5 percent
to the prefecture, and 45 percent to the county. 38 Unofficially, however, 16 percent was first
deducted at the national level for support of the Import/Export and CITES (Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) offices. Thus,
proceeds to the county level were approximately 30 percent (i.e., 80% x 84% x 45%) to
32 percent (i.e., 85% x 84% x 45%) of the amount paid by the hunter.
At the county level, two systems of further allocation were in place during 1997-2000.
Prior to 1998 in Aksai County, 50 percent of county-level funds were retained for general
expenditure purposes by the county treasury, and the remainder was provided directly to
the hunting area. In Subei, the county received 39 percent (rather than 45 percent) of in-
country revenue, of which 60 percent was retained for general purposes and 40 percent
provided to the hunting area. 39 Thus, about 12 to 16 percent of funds expended by hunters
were available for spending by the county-level hunting area managers, from which field
expenses for hunts were also paid. In both counties, salaries and overhead of the hunting
areas were paid from county funds.
Beginning in 1998, Aksai County altered its financial arrangement with the hunting
area by allowing it to keep all funds received at the county level. However, as part of this
reform, the county ceased all financial support of the hunting area and began treating it
as it would a private enterprise (although it remained officially a government bureau).
Salaries and overhead became the responsibility of the hunting area (i.e., they were paid
for entirely by hunter fees), and taxes were also levied on its income and property. This
partial privatization produced little change in total funding available (after considering
salaries and overhead), but increased the area's dependence on a steady supply of over-
seas hunters.
Based on the costs of my own field work and information provided by staff in Aksai, I
estimated field expenses (during the 1997-2003 time period) at approximately $2,400 per
hunt, or roughly equal to the 12 to 16 percent of hunters' funds reaching the hunting area.
Thus, under this funding scheme, the Aksai hunting area received only enough funding to
cover hunting services when argali 40 were hunted (see Table 8.2). Furthermore, even this
level of funding sometimes failed to materialize. For example, by August 2001, the Aksai
hunting area had received only approximately half of the funds it was due from hunts oc-
curring during 1998-2000 (i.e., approximately 8 percent of funds expended by hunters).
As a result of such shortfalls, during 1999 it went into debt by approximately ¥20,000
and was forced to take out a loan from the county government to continue operations.
At the Dulan hunting area in Qinghai, specifics as of 2004-06 differed slightly from
the arrangement described above, but the effect was similar. The proportion of in-country
funds held by the province had risen to 40 percent and that retained by the prefecture
had risen to 7 percent, leaving 29 percent to be provided directly to the hunting area for
expenses and other uses. (As of 2005, the provincial office was negotiating to reduce
Dulan's allocation to 23 percent, but had not yet succeeded.) Further, because the hunt-
ing area was treated as though it was a profit-making private business, these proceeds