Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
any tangible benefits at all), the value they are being told about must be somebody else's.
They can certainly be educated about the 1988 Wildlife Protection Law, which prohibits
them from hunting these species (even as it allows foreigners to do so). But in the context
of international hunting areas as currently managed, the message from foreign hunter to
local pastoralist amounts to little more than “I want to show you how valuable this animal
is to me. I'm willing to pay thousands of dollars for it, so you keep your hands off!”
But I suspect that the most important destination for these funds at higher governmental
levels is simply the bloated bureaucracies themselves. Officials are not pocketing these
funds directly, but rather using them to refurbish decrepit offices and buy newer comput-
ers. It is almost always the case that provincial wildlife offices have fancier and more
powerful vehicles than can be afforded by hunting area offices, even though the former
are used primarily to ferry dignitaries around cities whereas the latter are needed for the
rough conditions of field work. Each year, three or four provincial officials are funded
to attend large hunting conventions in the United States or Europe, ostensibly to help
popularize the hunting areas in their respective provinces. But these officials invariably
lack both the detailed knowledge of the hunting itself and the English-language skills
needed to interact productively with foreign hunters; the alternative enticements of a week
in Las Vegas inevitably turn these trips into little more than junkets.
Also blotting up much of the available funding at provincial levels are “hunting com-
panies,” which supposedly function in organizing the hunt. But with capable agents in
Beijing to make travel and permit arrangements, and local guides and service providers
at each hunting area, there seems little need for provincial-level intermediaries. Hunters
who pride themselves on their ability to climb to high elevations, negotiate harsh terrain,
and outwit an exquisitely adapted mountain ungulate would hardly seem to need a baby-
sitting service on the flight from Beijing. Yet in Gansu, for example, a dozen (or perhaps
more) people are employed as part of the provincial “hunting company” in Lanzhou, yet
are rarely (if ever) seen by hunters. They busy themselves with assorted office tasks, and
those with English skills occasionally accompany hunters to the field (where they sit
in camp). None of these employees makes a high income, but stack up enough of them
and it ultimately eats into the funding that is intended as an incentive for conservation in
places hundreds of kilometers away.
Power and Control
As troublesome as is the current system of revenue flows, correcting it would not in itself
transform these hunting areas into model wildlife conservation systems. The fundamen-
tal problem is that, like nature reserves, hunting areas lack control over land use within
them. The boundaries demarcating hunting areas serve to indicate regions within which
foreigners can legally hunt; they do nothing to distinguish policies regarding land use or
control of land management.
44
Thus, if heavy livestock grazing is deleterious to wildlife (as it clearly is, at least for
argali in some hunting areas), hunting area staff are powerless to do more than quietly
complain.
45
To the degree that any oversight of grazing occurs, that responsibility rests
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