TROPHY HUNTING - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 183

(US$122-244) killed. However, these payments were not guaranteed, but rather depended
on the solvency of the hunting area at the time. The village leader was, in turn, expected
to use these funds for socially desirable projects. 41
Other hunting areas in western China may have been faring somewhat better. For ex-
ample, the director of the Bu'erjin hunting area in Xinjiang told me in 2001 that he had
been receiving ¥100,000 ($12,195) for each argali trophy, or about 46 percent of the total
revenue possible. If so, and if this applies to other Xinjiang hunting areas, their finances
were probably in better shape than those of hunting areas in Qinghai and Gansu. How-
ever, I was unable to determine if all these funds were actually controlled by the Bu'erjin
hunting area (rather than going to the county's general fund), or whether the area paid
additional taxes on this income.
Thus, although the specifics remain murky and there are no doubt bright spots, it is clear
that these international hunting areas receive only a small proportion of the total funds
expended by hunters, and far less than would be needed to support an active program of
reimbursing local people for opportunity costs borne in pursuit of wildlife conservation.
To counter the argument that such a lopsided system of allocating funds is necessary or
inevitable, one need look no further than one of China's southern neighbors, Pakistan,
where similar hunts for mountain ungulates, though doubtless having problems of their
own, are structured to provide 75 or 80 percent of in-country revenue to the communities
in which the hunts take place. 42
Frequently seen claims that funds from hunters go to “local people” must be interpreted
carefully: just who is considered “local” depends on the perspective of the speaker. If
“local” is defined as “provincial level and below,” it is certainly true that large sums flow
from foreign hunters to local people. From the perspective of most pastoralists, however,
even the county level is not “local”; only benefits accruing at the township, or better yet,
village (or equivalent) level would be seen by many pastoralists as being, in any functional
way, theirs. Officials in provincial capitals may see themselves as local, and indeed may
consider that they manage the hunting areas or their wildlife from their distant cities. But
such management by remote control is little more than paper pushing.
Why are so few funds flowing to the hunting areas, and even fewer directly to local people
in whose hands these species' fates actually reside? To what use are the vast majority
of funds being put? Of course, transparency in accounting is almost unknown anywhere
in China, so we cannot be sure. And although accusations of wholesale corruption have
often been floated by critics of trophy hunting (particularly with respect to the former
Soviet Central Asian republics 43 ), I think it highly unlikely that hunter funds are going
directly into officials' pockets.
No doubt some of the funds channeled toward wildlife agencies at higher governmental
levels are being used, as often claimed, for educational purposes. One can hardly criticize a
general consciousness-raising regarding wildlife and such activities are not free of costs. But
some of the education comes in the form of what the Chinese themselves label “propaganda,”
and much of this in the form of “educating local people about the value of these animals.”
But because these same local people are at the short end of the funding stick (if receiving