TROPHY HUNTING - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 188

Reform from within currently seems unlikely. The hunting areas are powerless to
change the system from below, and authorities at both provincial and national levels are
unconvinced that any changes are needed or even desirable. Higher-level officials are,
of course, aware of complaints from the local level, but tend to see these as inevitable
rumblings from those in lower positions. Leaders at these levels have neither the time
nor the expertise to delve deeply into threats to wildlife that persist despite the presence
of international hunting areas. It does not help that the Chinese literature on the subject
is limited to uncritical rehashing of the theoretical rationale for sustainable use, 50 or
superficial attempts at quantitative assessment in the absence of data. As far as official
Chinese documentation goes, everything is just fine; the only thing that would make the
system better would be more hunters (preferably Americans). 51 In any case, reforming
this system would cost these officials power and control, and bureaucracies rarely devolve
power willingly: they generally require some outside pressure or some external incentive
before they will see it as being in their best interest.
Reform is also unlikely to come at the behest of Westerners who criticize trophy hunt-
ing in general. So outraged are they at the very notion of killing rare species that many
of them are unable to support any modification of a system that includes killing as a
component. Their shrillness may gain them the attention of the Western press (and occa-
sionally of politicians and judges), but it engenders in most Chinese a rigid defensiveness
that freezes the discussion. Progress toward solving conservation issues is paralyzed in
an atmosphere in which the Western side accuses the Chinese side of callous disregard
toward the very animals they claim to be conserving, while the Chinese side sees Western
critics as cultural imperialists with no understanding of Chinese history or the realities
of its impoverished west.
It would seem to be in the interest of trophy hunters themselves to agitate for reform.
Certainly, they would seem to be most ideally situated to call for it, because, by their
decisions of whether or not to purchase hunts, they ultimately control the purse strings.
But the nature of the trophy hunting business itself produces stronger incentives to ac-
cept the status quo than to take a strong stand in favor of improved management. Most
trophy hunters visit an area only once; after having procured the sought-after trophy,
they pursue something new, somewhere else. There are few return customers. Thus, as
individuals, their attention is normally drawn to the area they have not yet visited, rather
than the areas they have.
Hunters are almost always represented by foreign-based agents, who conceivably could
pressure higher-level Chinese authorities to reform these programs. However, risking the
displeasure of authorities who control their income stream (through the power to issue
hunting and export permits) is not generally seen as wise business practice by agents. If
a particular foreign-based agent is seen as too troublesome, officials in Beijing can easily
enough make life difficult for him, safe in the knowledge that other foreign-based agents
with more cooperative attitudes will be there to represent the same hunters. In such a
free-market setting, it seems unlikely that individual agents will take strong stands that
risk their own short-term business success.
Most hunting agents, in turn, participate in groups or associations through which