Geography Reference
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multifaceted program can gradually emerge. The progressive and useful aspects of China's
current international hunting programs are four:
1. Fixed and delineated areas within which wildlife management is a stated priority.
2. Staff at the county-level whose time and energy is formally dedicated to wildlife.
3. A source of funding that—at least theoretically—can be mobilized for conser-
vation.
4. Explicit recognition of the Devil's bargain concept (in this variant, that a few
individual animals pay with their lives the opportunity cost of maintaining wildlife
habitat).
This Devil's bargain has not yet been struck in China's international hunting areas,
largely because hunting managers are provided neither authority to maintain wildlife
habitat nor control of the financial benefits from their own success. Minor alterations
of this system are unlikely to engage the intended incentives toward habitat conserva-
tion. Higher trophy fees charged to hunters, a revised allocation schedule of revenues,
consultation with county-level managers, better communication and coordination with
provincial and national authorities, increased understanding of the program's intent
among county-level leaders—all of these would constitute steps in the right direction,
but none would transform Chinese trophy hunting from a commercial program into a
conservation program.
Rather, the fundamental disconnect in the current system needs to be remedied. If hunt-
ing area managers are expected to operate under a business model, they must be provided
with control over both production and revenue. To control the production of wildlife
means the ability to limit disturbance and modification of habitat—in essence, author-
ity over land use. As long as land use is controlled by people and entities not intimately
connected with wildlife, Chinese hunting areas will fail to actively conserve wildlife. As
long as hunting managers lack control over their revenue streams, they cannot even begin
to envision plans in which such funds might be used to further wildlife and its habitat.
If these fundamental reforms were to be enacted, the rest would be details, no doubt
consuming much of the local staff's time and energy, but relatively unimportant for
conservation on a larger scale. Certainly, government oversight and coordination would
be needed and some standards would need to be enforced. I would prefer to see hunting
areas treated as units of the government, with staff salaries provided by county govern-
ments just as those of other civil servants are (as contrasted with the quasi-privatization
experiment tried in Aksai). If revenues are then sufficient, hunting areas could reimburse
counties for all or part of these expenses. But regardless of their precise relationship with
county governments, hunting areas need to be authorized to control land use within them,
provided with the proceeds directly from hunters (paying those in Beijing or provincial
capitals for necessary services), and able to use those proceeds to pay the opportunity
costs of maintaining their lands primarily for wildlife. That may mean, as in Aksai, where
intensive pastoralism is incompatible with a high-value argali population, purchasing
entire livestock herds, removing those pastoralists from the hunting area, and providing
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