Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
them genuine assistance in obtaining new occupations.
2
In other areas, it might mean as
little as monitoring and limiting livestock herd growth, with no need for dramatic changes
to local livelihoods (as in portions of the Dulan hunting area). It must mean, in any case,
that commerce provided by hunting enhances the value these wild lands already possess
for both local people and governments, acting as a counterforce to incompatible com-
mercial pressures.
To curb any tendency for prioritizing short-term profit, these hunting areas must also
have more reliable systems for monitoring wildlife populations and for establishing and
maintaining harvest quotas. But given the two fundamental reforms I have suggested,
these should come relatively easily. The system is a closed one, with incentives to over-
harvest counterbalanced by the certainty that doing so would be bad for business. As
long as there exists a supply of wealthy hunters willing to pay for a large trophy in an
essentially wild area, managers suitably equipped and empowered to provide it to them
would be well positioned to engage in something that, in the West, would be recognizable
as wildlife conservation.
Alas, even if reformed in this fundamental sense, international hunting can, at best,
form only the cornerstone of a wildlife conservation system for all of western China.
The supply of hunters is not inexhaustible, the areas to which they might be transported
are finite, and the species of interest are few. Further, trophy hunting as a premise for
conservation inevitably contains the seeds of its own destruction, because it depends
crucially on the presence of revenues that far exceed expenses (it simply does not cost
$20,000 to outfit an argali hunt, although the indirect and opportunity costs may well
run this high). In turn, the disproportionate fees paid by trophy hunters depend—at least
in part—on rarity. The trophy hunter is interested in novelty and uniqueness. If trophy
hunting programs succeed so well that they become ubiquitous, and the animals carrying
trophy heads commonplace, it will be difficult to maintain the luxury fees they currently
command. A system premised on luxury and rarity can provide a partial model, and can
perhaps assist other programs that are less well endowed, but it cannot be expanded
without limit. Other applications of the Devil's bargain will be needed.
Subsistence Hunting
Most pastoralists, while not lacking for meat, would gladly take the opportunity to
supplement their diet with wild game, were it provided. Hunting has traditionally been a
minor, but nonetheless substantial, part of pastoral culture and livelihood, and complete
prohibitions are currently a source of discontent and distrust directed at governments.
3
And there are, in China's west, a few species sufficiently numerous and with habitats
currently adequately safe from threat (even outside of nature reserves) that they could,
biologically, sustain a modest subsistence hunt. Blue sheep, Tibetan gazelle, Tibetan wild
ass, and Asiatic ibex come to mind. (In fact, up until relatively recently, low levels of such
subsistence hunts were tacitly acknowledged and tolerated by government authorities.)
However, such a proposal faces immediate difficulties.
First, subsistence hunting of most species of interest to would-be consumers is cur-
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