Cape Town - The US conservation authorities have put a temporary ban on sport hunters taking elephant trophies back to the US.
The ban applies to trophies of elephants hunted in Tanzania or Zimbabwe this year.
Local hunting companies have slammed the move, and say if hunting outfitters have to close up shop, it will “open the gates to poachers” and take income away from poor communities.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service said it suspended the imports of sport-hunted elephant trophies from these countries due to “questionable management practices, a lack of effective law enforcement and weak governance” which had resulted in “uncontrolled poaching and catastrophic population declines in Tanzania”.
“In Zimbabwe, available data, though limited, indicate a significant decline in the elephant population. Anecdotal evidence, such as the widely publicised poisoning last year of 300 elephants in Hwange National Park, suggests that Zimbabwe’s elephants are also under siege”, the US organisation said.
It said while legal, well-regulated sport hunting could be part of sound conservation management, by providing incentives to people to conserve species and putting money back into conservation, additional killing of elephants was not sustainable in Tanzania and Zimbabwe and did not help the recovery of the species.
However, Ron Thomson, a former game warden in Hwange Game Reserve in Zimbabwe now living in South Africa, has condemned the US move and has written to President Barack Obama to ask him to lift the ban.
“For the US to impose a ban with absolutely zero information on the ground is absolutely ridiculous. This has been stirred up by the animal rights NGOs, who want to close down all wildlife trade from Africa. If they continue with this, it will close down elephant hunting. They will be opening up poaching in these prime reserves. The presence of professional hunters is the biggest deterrent to poaching. The local people will become impoverished. The US has got gall to feel they can dictate to Africa what they should do,” Thomson said.
Robin Hurt, who runs a hunting company in Tanzania, wrote to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to say the import suspension was in effect creating a ban on US citizens hunting elephants in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
“Safari hunting is an important wildlife management tool in Africa. It produces important revenue from legitimate licensed hunting to take off surplus game animals. It helps pay for anti-poaching efforts by safari companies and governments. Your suspension will seriously erode revenue so badly needed in Zimbabwe and Tanzania to help fund anti-poaching. The cancellations will cause financial loss to conservancies where local people will not understand your reasoning. Some will simply turn to poaching to compensate their losses,” Hurt wrote.
Hurt said instead of the ban, the US organisation should liaise with African governments to help them with management practices, and should help fund anti-poaching programmes.
The US has said it would review its policy next year. - Cape Times