TROPHY HUNTING - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 189

they might, theoretically, act in concert. In the United States and Canada, Safari Club
International has about 40,000 members, and has become a powerful political force for
the interests of trophy hunters (as well as other kinds of hunters). In Europe, the Conseil
International de la Chasse performs a similar function. These organizations have made
some initial moves toward prodding governments in Central Asia and elsewhere to ensure
that trophy hunts contribute to conservation. Unfortunately, toward China they have thus
far remained silent, and authorities in Beijing see their tacit approval as further confirma-
tion that nothing whatsoever is wrong with the system.
A valid rationale for trophy hunting rests in similar terrain as the “Devil's bargain”:
it says that taking the life of some animals is the bargain we make with nature in order
to limit our own almost inevitably destructive behavior toward natural ecosystems. We
must find some way to reward ourselves for paying the opportunity cost inherent in
maintaining these habitats. That opportunity cost is paid primarily by people living in
close contact with wildlife; those are the people who need rewards and incentives. Alas,
as things stand now, neither the local people nor the wildlife whose habitat they live on
are reaping much benefit. And the opportunity to build upon the Devil's bargain of con-
trolled use in exchange for restraining our tendency to extirpate wildness—by developing
programs involving subsistence or other forms of hunting—is slowly slipping like sand
through our fingertips.