Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
LOST OPPORTUNITIES
The great tragedy here is that by managing international hunting areas in this way, Chinese
authorities have lost a priceless opportunity to develop them into functioning, locally
operated, and largely self-funding conservation systems. The fundamental premise on
which the hunting areas are based remains sound. Although better population monitoring
and more thoughtful quota setting would be improvements, the hunting itself has been, as
Chinese officials have claimed, biologically benign. In contrast to other forms of wildlife-
based tourism, trophy hunting has not required developing permanent infrastructure on
or near critical wildlife habitat. Disturbance to wildlife, habitat, and local cultures have
all been quite minor. From the business perspective, the vast majority of hunters who
have experienced what these areas have to offer have been satisfied with their experience.
Most are happy with the quality of the trophy they bagged, and felt well treated by their
Chinese hosts; there appears to be a continuing supply of international hunters.
In fact, it's even better than that. In establishing these local hunting areas, the Chinese
government has unearthed a resource it may not have realized it had: local personnel
(most often ethnic minorities) with enthusiasm for wildlife conservation and field savvy.
They may lack university training, but many of these young staff are bright, motivated,
and energetic. Given training and empowered, they could form the nucleus of a wildlife
management system based on the “Devil's bargain” that I introduced earlier: deliberately
limiting human transformation of wild habitats in return for limited use of the wild products
those habitats produce. As well, these hunting areas exist at an appropriate geographic and
political scale, both biologically and socially. They are large enough to manage biological
populations of large mammals, yet small enough that the relevant human communities
involved can conceivably engage in mutual sharing of benefits and sacrifices. In time,
such a system could be expanded beyond foreign hunting to include species and regions
where local people could become active participants. Thus far, this opportunity has been
squandered because both funding allocation and power structures treat these local staff
as hired hands instead of partners in management.
Foreign hunters constitute a source of funding and enthusiasm for wildness, and the
germ of a method to empower such wildness in the face of competing economic interests.
By linking rewards (in the form of desired wild product) to investment (maintaining an
essentially wild character), trophy hunting could, by now, be operating as a model for
Chinese management in places other than those where consumptive use is reserved for
foreigners. If revenues exceed costs (as they surely do in the case of argali, highly priced
because of their rarity and exclusivity), surplus funds could be spent establishing similarly
justified management zones in areas where foreigners cannot easily travel, and for species
in which foreigners have no interest. But to do this, the system needs to be reformed into
one that views hunting (and attendant revenue) as the fuel for a program that looks out
for the needs of featured wildlife and has power to intercede on wildlife's behalf. The
current system assumes that merely by hunting, and merely by generating funds that are
distributed over a wide array of bureaus and companies (none of which manage wildlife
habitat), conservation will occur automatically.
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