Namibia’s unique historical context has significantly shaped its conservation efforts. Today, about 22% of its land area is protected under communal conservancies.
Before gaining independence in 1990, communal farmers in traditional areas had no rights over wildlife, as it was owned by the state. After independence, the country sought to address this issue.
To do so, Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) CEO Chris Brown says Namibia “implemented legislation that allowed local communities to identify and establish conservancies — areas where they could manage wildlife collectively. This approach has led to the formation of 86 conservancies across the country, which now employ about 58,000 rural people.”
Brown says the impact of this programme has been profound.
“More than half of Namibia’s communal areas are now managed as conservancies, involving about a quarter of a million people as members. The benefits at the household level have been notable, with a dramatic resurgence of wildlife in many regions.”
According to the Namibia Statistics Agency, the national unemployment rate stands at 36.9%. And where there is poverty, the poaching of wildlife follows.
In a recent NCE video produced by MaMoKoBo Films, Bennett Kahuure, director of parks and wildlife at the ministry of environment, forestry & and tourism, says: “We’ve seen quite a lot of improvement in the livelihoods of our people from a policy perspective, because before independence our communities were effectively banned from using in any form the rights over wildlife.
“And with the conservancy legislation that came in 1996, we’ve seen a complete change, not just in the legislation, but also in the benefits that accrue to rural residents through this communal conservancy programme.”
Nevertheless, there are repeated calls from anti-trophy hunting lobbyists, including from some European countries such as the UK, for a ban on the importation of hunting trophies into their countries.
This view aligns with that of other influential interest groups such as World Animal Protection (WAP). “The British people do not want the body parts of endangered species imported here, because they care about these majestic species and want them to continue to exist,” says WAP UK campaigns director Peter Kemple Hardy.
In response, Kahuure says a ban on trophies could lead to the collapse of Namibia’s communal conservancy sector. He says hunting revenue accounts for about 45% of the funds supporting this sector, emphasising its importance.
Like many others, South African activist Smaragda Louw, director of Ban Animal Trading, opposes hunting on moral and ethical grounds. She dismisses hunters’ claims of ethical practices, especially around canned hunting, viewing the creation of self-regulated rules by trophy hunters as lacking true ethics. “Hunters often label some hunting as unethical but, ultimately, they just define what’s acceptable to themselves, not what is morally right.”
The point is, when hunting contracts end, wildlife habitats are taken over for farming and small-scale mining
— Margaret Jacobsohn
Namibia Professional Hunting Association president Axel Cramer points out that trophy hunters make up 3%-5% of tourists, but generate 20% of tourism revenue. He says bans could lead to lower funding for tourism in Namibia as well as retrenchments, as hunting farms employ twice the labour force of agricultural farms.
However, Louw asserts that “an industry rooted in immoral and unethical practices can never serve as a sustainable foundation for job creation. Trophy hunting exemplifies such an industry. As a sport — if it can even be called that — killing animals to collect trophies for display is fundamentally unethical. Such activities should not be endorsed or regarded as acceptable.”
Brown argues that the issue with proposed bans is that they reflect a misunderstanding of Africa’s wildlife as a self-owned national resource and asset.
“And they reflect a lack of respect for the sovereignty and management ability of those countries that are doing a good job. The UK has lost most of its megafauna within modern human history — the elk, bear, wolf and lynx, for example — and has made no attempt to reintroduce them. Its farmers and citizens would likely not tolerate such reintroductions.
“Namibia has preserved all its biodiversity, including much more challenging species to coexist with than small furry mammals and wolves, such as elephant, hippo, crocodile, buffalo, lion, leopard and hyena.”
Brown says Namibia has created mechanisms to incentivise farmers to live with difficult and damaging animals. Trophy hunting, with revenue going back to farmers and communities, is a significant part of the incentive package.
“So successful has this been that our elephant population has increased from about 7,500 animals at the time of independence in 1990 to about 25,000 today. Trophy bans will undermine these incentives and make the cost of living with elephants, as an example, greater than the benefits.
“Any sensible person would then remove the elephants from their land. And this is being propagated by a country [the UK] that ranks 132nd in the world in terms of its megafaunal management track record and capability, compared with Namibia, which is ranked second in the world after Botswana.”
Conservationist Margaret Jacobsohn, though not a hunter herself, highlights Kenya as a case study on the ineffectiveness of hunting bans. She notes that the country banned all hunting in 1977. “I am citing a 2016 study by Ogutu and colleagues, who examined the period from 1977 to 2016 and found that Kenyan wildlife populations declined by 68%, with some larger mammals experiencing declines of more than 80%.
“There has been a simultaneous rise in livestock numbers. The point is, when hunting contracts end, wildlife habitats are taken over for farming and small-scale mining.”
Brown says: “Over this period, wildlife in Kenya declined from about 1.5-million animals to about 500,000. Over the same period, Namibia’s wildlife increased from 500,000 to about 3-million. The sustainable use policy approach of Namibia, vs the anti-hunting approach of Kenya, is responsible for these different trajectories.”
But as arguments from pro- and anti-hunting lobbyists intensify, climate change is adding yet another twist to the debate. Climate resilience is a challenge that may inevitably require both sides to adapt.
“Namibia is heating up faster than the global average,” says Brown. “We’re already over 1.5°C hotter than we were in 1920. We’ve modelled the effects climate change will have on Namibia and they are essentially driving rainfall north and east.
“This means more and more of the country is becoming uneconomical under conventional farming practices, and we’ve already seen areas going bankrupt. The farms don’t work, so people are turning that over to wildlife and tourism.”
He says to control populations, private and communal lands take off wildlife, mainly for meat — about 1% of the herd annually — plus trophy hunting and live sales. Trophy hunting, though small in scale, yields much higher values per animal. For example, an oryx valued at N$3,500 for meat could be worth N$40,000 as a trophy, reflecting its added value as a service experience.
Activists such as Louw warn that legal hunting often leads to illegal hunting: “Trophies — the heads, tusks, horns and other body parts of magnificent wild animals — are what we will leave behind for the next generation.”
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