Hi Jennifer,
Africa has unveiled a new plan to manage its swelling elephant numbers. This culling proposal has in recent years split conservation groups.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) opposes the culling programme stating that, “It is cruel and dividing elephant families.” They think cross-border megaparks and contraceptives programmes are the best solution.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), on the other hand, is applauding the government’s move stating that, “It is necessary to protect other species and especially native plants from the swelling numbers”. They also state, “Given elephant’s ability to transform an entire landscape, action is needed, or the result will be mass starvation of elephants and other species.”
The elephant culling will take place in the famous Kruger park. Thousands of the country’s 20,000 elephants are targeted for slaughter.
Animal rights organisations are warning and threatening with boycotts, mainly from European countries. Threats of boycotts have, however, had minimal impact in pro-whaling countries so far.
The animal rights organisations are concerned that commercial interests in elephant trade (meat, skin, ivory) are an underlying motive for the culling. South Africa wants to lift the ban on ivory trade.
The debate on elephant culling raises the issue: Is it acceptable to kill wild animals for utilization of natural resources?
There is some more information at Planet Ark.
Cheers,
Ann Novek
In Sweden.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
According to The Independent (1 March 2007) in a piece entitled ‘Elephant cull’:
A century ago Africa had just 6,000 elephants left. Now there are 600,000 …
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article328154.ece
The wrath of conservationists over culling elephants is because of the fact that there are plenty of countries in Africa which do not have enough elephants due to massive unsustainable poaching for the ivory trade, during the 1970s.
It therefore makes a great deal more environmental sense for South Africa to trade surplus elephants than shoot them.
Elephants are an intrinsic part of the complex web of savanna fauna and flora of Africa. They help control forest encroachment by foraging on trees and therefore help protect the habitat of all the animals that have evolved to exist on Africa’s open savannas.
The animal that is responsible for catastrophic habitat loss for all species everywhere on the planet is Homo sapiens.
Managment for biodiversity is very simple, humans need to live sustainably.
Only the grasping, mean spirited and ignorant have to invent endless animal scapegoats for mankind’s wanton, unsustainable, destruction of a planetary life support system so complex that scientists admit they have precious little genuine understanding of it.
South African elephant culling is not just an opportunity for the international ivory trade to try to re-establish itself on a larger scale….
It also cynically avoids creating competitive tourist markets… the following excerpts are taken from an article published in the Pretoria News in January 2006 –
‘Creating more areas for tourists means that the existing tourist cake is going to be sliced thinner.’
Thats in South Africa itself, so obviously if you ship elephants to another African country that does not have them or has very few: the cake gets smaller, as well as thinner for South Africa.’
However if South Africa culls elephants instead they can make arrangements for ‘trophy’ hunters to do the culling, adding a lucrative new income stream. South Africa can also push for a relaxation in the ivory trade so as not to ‘waste’ the ‘by-product’ of the culling process, adding another lucrative new income stream.
The countries without elephants will remain uncompetative.
Those countries with very few elephants will lose them (as poaching intensifies again when restrictions on the ivory trade are relaxed). This will reduce safari competion still further.
As a bonus the parks will look ‘prettier’ if there is less physical evidence of elephant foraging and this will attract new investment for luxury lodges for tourists to stay in a Disneyfied South Africa.
The fundamentals of the real problem are addressed in this quote, tucked away in the middle of the article.
‘Range expansion: The acquisition of land to enlarge reserves.
“Apart from cost factors,” says the report, “elephants and humans favour similar habitats, and therefore land will not easily become available.’
It is worth noting that the World Wildlife Fund is backing the move to “cull” elephants. The group is at the forefront of the trend to “monetize” activist influence.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is engaged in the same game. In the beginning, these groups were simply “against” things. Now, they can be brought in as “consultants” or as non-governmental agencies (NGAs) which “certify” certain things as “green.” For a fee, of course.
Lamna is right to point out the financial incentives to culling, and the WWF is delivering the green stamp of approval, as it was paid to do.
If the killed elephants are used productively and if it helps survival of others, then the program makes sense. We have deer everywhere around us and you have to be careful not to hit one while you’re driving. The expanding deer population outstrips their food supply, so thinning the population helps the remaining ones to thrive. It sounds the same for elephants, and you really don’t want one of those to run out in front of your car, either.
And the Independent also published a few days earlier:
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2308414.ece
What is the science behind the calls for culling?
Libby,
You are on dangerous ground when you wonder about “the science behind the calls for culling.” That nearly almost somewhat suggests humans should have something to do with nature.
The Greenies want us to understand it and live in harmony with it, but have no impact on it. Your notion of “science” is but the first step in the direction of eating these creatures.
The science behind culls is fairly straightforward, Animals make more offspring than is strictly required for replacement (chappie named Darwin described this in the 1800s). Habitats- especially many nature reserves- have a limited carrying capacity. On a large scale, moderating animal populations is practically impossible to achieve via contraceptives or translocations. Even on a small scale, culls tend to be the most efficient and effective way of dealing with population swings.
This is because- as many people who actually work with wild animals realise- conservation means having to deal with problems of ‘abundance’ and not always problems of ‘low population’.
Ann notes “The debate on elephant culling raises the issue: Is it acceptable to kill wild animals for utilization of natural resources?”
Damn straight it is. Large chunks of this planet’s surface are inhabitated by people who still rely upon wild animals as resources. For most of human history, we have used wildlife for food, clothing and the development of our culture. Bush meat makes up a significant percentage of many poor, rural communities’ protein in many developing countries.
Isn’t this question more akin to, ‘is it okay to commit genocide by starvation on hundreds of millions of people just becuase killing wild animals offends the sensibilities of a few rich white folk in the Northern Hemisphere?’
Schiller,
No the earth is pretty solid from where I stand. I am not sure what planet you live on but on this one humans usually do “have something to do with nature,” whether you, I, greenies, rednecks or nature likes it or not.
“Your notion of “science” is but the first step in the direction of eating these creatures.”
Again, I have no idea what planet you are on Schiller!
My question was regarding elephant culls and what science is out there supporting or opposing it. I was not expressing an opinion either way but putting forward a valid question. Cthoniid’s sarcasm involving Darwin and field researchers working on “wild animals” shows how quick he is to belittle anyone who may oppose his views on sustainable use, in typical style of contributors to David at Tokyo’s blog.
The general goal at Kruger has been to maintain elephants at roughly a density of 0.32 to 0.37 elephants per square km. Above 0.29 elephants per km2, impacts on other components of the park (vegetation in the first instance, then other wildlife) start to become deleterious.
Culls were used as a management tool for almost 30 years (1967-1996), generally with the aim of keeping the population between 6000 and 8500 animals. Intrinsic growth rates are relatively high, possibly as a consequence of maintaining habitat in a less disturbed state.
Experiments with alternatives (contraceptives, translocations) have been expensive- e.g. dominant females who can’t breed create conflicts within the family structure- and less successful at keeping the elephant population within these ecological limits.
Basically we ended up trading a management system that was being continually improved upon, for an ‘exogenous’ system that has not worked as well.
I got the date wrong for the Independent piece. I thought it was published yesterday when in it was in fact published last November (Elephant Cull. By Geoffrey Lean and Mike Cadman, Published: 20 November 2005).
The piece is difficult to reconcile with the more recent piece (link provided above by Libby: Africa sees the return of the elephant killers. By Steve Connor, published: 27 February 2007).
So how many elephants are there in Africa and while numbers are increasing in the south of the continent what is really happening in places like Kenya?
Hi Jennifer
Data on African elephants is notoriously difficult to come by- on account counting them as a lot harder than most people can imagine.
The major complication has come from the CITES Appendix I listing. Appendix I does not mandate any monitoring of the wild population. An Appendix II system does require that the wild population be monitored. So the Appendix I listing has meant that many African countries have opted out of any monitoring. The result is we have less idea now than we did in the 80s and early 90s.
Kenya has two main problems with its wildlife. The first is that it has a porous border with Somalia. Poaching neighbouring countries wildlife is a national past-time in Somalia. The second is that it has relied upon one policy instrument to cope with poaching- law enforcement- which expanded to a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy under Leakie. Interestingly, last year he confessed this has not worked.
Southern African countries have tended to rely upon several policy instruments- including legal harvest- and combined with adequate monitoring- are sustaining their populations.
Chthoniid,
Thanks for your insights. I lived in Kenya from 1989 through to 1992 a period when I understand elephant populations in Tsavo East and West National Parks were decimated.
I was irregularly travelling through those parks (including along the Somali border sometimes under police escort) but didn’t really have much of an idea of what was going on re. elephant conservation and politics. Indeed back then I was very focused on my entomological research and didn’t know what an ‘opinion piece’ in a newspaper was and loathed politics including the ‘wildlife politics’ at the time in Kenya.
But the impression I had was that President Moi and his cronies were happy with the ban on ivory and stunts like burning piles of ivory … because it pushed up the price on the black market. Also, is it true that a census of elephant population in Kenya in the late 1980s resulted in the illegal slaughter of elepants in East Tsavo for ivory … once a government minister learnt how many were there i.e. it was better for elephant conservation in places like Kenya at that time that the government had no idea where the elephants were … that they were safer when there was no counting or monitoring?
PS Back then (late 1980s, early 1990s) you could buy ivory products in Zimbabwe and elephant populations were large but appeared well managed.
Chthoniid,
Thanks for your comments – always informative. I was interested to see that Appendix I does not mandate monitoring of the population, but Appendix II does. What is the philosophy behind that? If it’s not (supposed to be) being utilized, it needn’t be monitored?
I think the price dynamics of ivory in the 80s and early 90s were driven by demand factors, rather than supply. Prices seemed to be caught in a speculative bubble (which may well have linked to the biannual efforts to ban the trade at CITES)- this bubble collapsed in the early 90s as Asian stockpiles had swelled to extraordinary levels.
I’ve never quite unerstood the rationale for burning the Kenyan ivory- but many people in the Kenyan government were complicit or participants in the illegal trade. It was suggested that destroying the ivory was a way to prevent it later reappearing in the illegal market. Who really knows what they were thinking- it did swing a lot of people around to their perspective however.
You can still buy Ivory products in many Asian countries- I’ve come back from China and there is plenty around for sale. You can’t export it of course. You can however, buy very similar mammoth ivory 🙂 in China and take that home as a souvenier. The quality of the carving is very, very good.
Chthonic regards
B
Libby,
If you wish to be rude with regards to the contributers at my blog I for one would appreciate it if you do it there rather than dropping your load here. Such comments contribute nothing to Jen’s discussion forum, and don’t exactly flatter you either.
Could everyone please try and be polite and on topic at this thread from now on. 🙂
Hi Jennifer
yes- for many years Zimbabwe was regarded as a conservation management success story. It has become a tragedy since then. Programs like CAMPFIRE interestingly, grew out of local communities taking back control of wildlife, and the Harere Govt running with the idea and letting it take its course. They had paratroopers out hunting for poachers, rather than rangers…
Botswana I think had an even better management system, but less well known. S Africa’s management was alas, difficult to replicate as they put a lot of money into management of their wildlife- far more than most other African countries could manage.
David,
“Such comments contribute nothing to Jen’s discussion forum, and don’t exactly flatter you either.”
As you’ve just demonstrated yourself.
Re cross-border megaparks…there are problems with land mines in Angola, but it seems like elephants have a sense to avoid landmines. Best info that I have read today!
David-
re CITES, I’m not sure why there is a difference in monitoring requirements. CITES was drafted in 1972, in a time when people thought the international wildlife trade was a much more important driver of extinction. I wasn’t around at the time :-).
Nonetheless, I’m sympathetic to the argument that it is better to have a species on Appendix II with a zero quota, than to have an Appendix I listing. If it’s on App II you have some idea of what’s going on. If it’s on App I, it’s nearly impossible to tell if the ban is having on good (or bad) effect.
Libby,
It’s like the Japanese whale boats. You study creatures as a prelude, prologue or pretext for eating them. Or making money off them. Well, I guess that’s also like the Americans and Indians and Europeans and so forth. But anyone studying and managing is going to “disturb the fragile balance of Nature.” Which is of course evil unless a greenie does it.
Do Elephants eat Brigalow? or Gidgea?
I hear their turds make awesome ashtrays when covered in resin, but you need a big desk.
It should also be borne in mind by the fluffy bunny brigade that Elephants have evolved over more than 500 millenia in a landscape where their numbers have been managed by predation from humans.
Neanderthals were part of their normal risk/response environment and that means those who have that inheritance, like Luke & Pinxie, have a pre-existing environmental duty of care to maintain those practices.
Some distant, ancestral belting over the head with a trunk may well explain a few behavioural issues on this blog, don’t you think?
From personal experience I know that elephants knock over many trees, sometimes to eat the green leaves at the top, but sometimes apparently just for fun. An overabundance of elephants will destroy large areas of forest, or savanna woodland. Humans doing the same thing would be called eco-vandals.
Also from personal experience I know that elephants can destroy the maize and vegetable gardens of African villagers. This can mean near starvation for the villagers. Humans doing the same might be accused of ethnic cleansing.
These are conservation dilemmas that may not occur to Australian, European or American armchair suburban eco-theorists, raised on a fantasy diet of TV nature programs, or university Biodiversity 100, or nice safe street demonstrations with placards and megaphones. Reality is rather different.
Nice points Davey…
So we can all agree there is an overabundance of elephants in the Kruger park and according to SA authorities adjacent reserves and game parks are also full.
Elephants are ” terrorizing” villagers, and poor and unemployed farmers want to cull elephants to make a living. Is it fair?
According to SA the trade in ivory will go to investements in parks.
To study the case more closely look up the recent published IUCN African Elephant Status Report from the IUCN Specialist Group.
There is also a study on Human-Elephant confrontations.
http://iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/afesg/
Nice points Davey…
So we can all agree there is an overabundance of elephants in the Kruger park and according to SA authorities adjacent reserves and game parks are also full.
Elephants are ” terrorizing” villagers, and poor and unemployed farmers want to cull elephants to make a living. Is it fair?
According to SA the trade in ivory will go to investements in parks.
To study the case more closely look up the recent published IUCN African Elephant Status Report from the IUCN Specialist Group.
There is also a study on Human-Elephant confrontations.
http://iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/afesg/
Just for the record.
WWF, is an organisation that cares for numbers, I call them the ” numbers people”…
IFAW, and similar animal welfare organisations are looking after individuals….
Ann: re WWF, they compromise on their policy of sustainable use where whales are concerned, presumably because it’s the politically expedient thing to do. Understandable and unacceptable.
“You study creatures as a prelude, prologue or pretext for eating them. Or making money off them.”
Schiller, I know many people studying spiders, phasmids and mantids, but I don’t think we will be eating them or making money off them any time soon. There are researchers who study whole organisms for other reasons.
“Humans doing the same might be accused of ethnic cleansing.”
Davey, I’m not quite sure what point you are trying to make. Are you putting elephant consciousness on the same level as humans? I’m not disagreeing with you about elephants trampling villages and crops, and the same thing happens in India and Sri Lanka.
“It should also be borne in mind by the fluffy bunny brigade that Elephants have evolved over more than 500 millenia in a landscape where their numbers have been managed by predation from humans.” Yes with high calibre hunting rifles and chain saws I’m sure. Ian illustrates that there’s been no decline in hominid intellectual mutation rates.
One ” conservation” group wrote: ” We can not allow elephant culling because of the tourists… one day they are out on a safari and the next day they might see elephant meat hanging on the hook”
Geeez, it is this kind of arguments that I really dislike. Don’t the tourists buy meat in the supermarkets? Again this making difference between animals … some are worth more other less.
I am starting to appreciate Elephants,
“elephants knock over many trees, sometimes to eat the green leaves at the top, but sometimes apparently just for fun”.
And some sick bastard wants to shoot them?
This, combined with recent research that showed them recognising their own image in a mirror, and responding, is clear evidence of them being sentient beings.
I would like to import a thousand of them for guest agistment on certain Qld properties. Damn it, it is our duty to do so.
Actually Ian, one of the most valuable products from elephants was their leather- in gross money terms elephant leather was on par with ivory as a payoff.
Problem was that while there was no smuggling issue with leather, there was with ivory- but the CITES ban (Appendix I listing) affected _all_ elephant products. So the leather trade was destroyed, along with the legal ivory market, in the hopes this would kill off the poaching (cough, cough).
I think the elephant leather industry is pretty well destroyed now, and unlikely to ever re-emerge.
Judging by the increased frequency of Motts petty insults against me, he really misses me. Is that the best you can do to wooo a woman Ian? No surprise you had to settle for one without opposable thumbs.
Examine yourselves: Libby asked an objective, valid question about the science and got slagged off according to various preconceived notions and Schillers anti-science fundamentalist God trap.
On the heffalump population increase and relocating elephants, I hear that some attempts have resulted in rogue, destructive adolescent elephant behaviours where the displaced population hasnt comprised a representative community, ie signs of stress and the lack of moderating guidance by more mature elephants. ie: you need your Mrs Ts in the elephant world too, otherwise you get Motty type elephants causing havoc with their immature and threatening antics, knocking down trees without permits and blowing up rhinos, etc.
Motty note that you\’ve already exceeded your post quota. So no annoying small trunk syndrome trumpeting displays pls.
It would seem that I have managed to get up your nose, Pinxie. I have a few neighbours who might richly deserve a visit from a stray pachyderm. Do they eat dope plants?
I’m sure they like dope plants! Anyway they love to be ethanol intoxicated by eating fruits of the amaruhla trees…. Watch up for drunken elephants, I wouldn’t like to meet one…
I believe the question on the floor is: “Is it acceptable to kill wild animals for utilization of natural resources?”
Wild animals are, literally, a “natural” resource. By contrast, domesticated animals are not. They are an artificial, i.e., “unnatural” resource.
Since wild/natural resources are hugely ineffective and wasteful when used in their natural state, domestication has consistently proved to be the best alternative. That is, for instance, where we got our crops and our cows.
So, the answer is to domesticate elephants. The others just run around making trouble–and more troublous elephants.
Tourists could still gawk at the domesticated elephants. And once the elephants were all domesticated, people would breed them, leading to biodiversity. There could be Guernsey and Hereford elephants, for instance. Miniature elephants for the home.
People are overlooking some real possibilities here.
Drunken Elephants? You have obviously never seen a Rugby team in a pub, Ann.
Elephant milk? Just don’t mix it with the damned baby formula. Domesticated Elephants? I think Hanibal might have already thought of that one, as well as the Thais.
It would sure liven up the running of the bulls in Pampalona. Just hose the tourists out from between their toes.
Ian,
You may be interested to know that a “international consultant”, Sir David Hutchins, recommended (in 1918 I think) that elephants be introduced to New Zealand, where they could be tamed for logging in kauri forests. The same said Hutchins was the one who recommended that pheasants and deer be introduced to Western Australia. He also recommended that fire be excluded from the jarrah forest by interplanting with pine trees, because, in his opinion, pines are so shady that they do not burn. I think he died soon after, and was buried in NZ. Beware of those who profess expertise on fire, forests and elephants.
Asian elephants (Elaphus maximus) have a fairly long history of human use. African elephants (Loxodonta africana) have not been so amenable to training- I think it was the Belgians who first made the effort. The elephants used by Hannibal were likely to be an extinct northern African sub-species- indicated by classical sources that state unequivocally that the ‘African’ elephant was smaller than the ‘Asian’ (as used by Hellenistic armies in Syria etc).
Non-domesticated sources of food still predominate as sources of protein, fibre and medicine in many parts of the world. I’m not sure that domestication is a particularly good conservation strategy.
Hey, we even had a BBQ with kangaroo meat last night 🙂
So we all know this elephant problem is about habitat loss and human-elephant interactions.
Europeans are keen on to save elephants but they would hardly themselves accept an elephant ” terrorizing” in some rural area.
I was thinking about a bear case last winter in Europe.One endangered brown bear roamed around in the countryside and killed some sheep, and almost everyone wanted to kill the bear , but they wouldn’t have the same understanding for human -elephant confrontations in Africa, Sri Lanka or India.
So what is really the solution.
Moving elephants to other areas seem to be a good idea , but there seems to be problems that they want to come back ” home”.
Contraceptives have also the problem for cows that the matings will increase and that might be stressful for the cows.
Utilization of elephants? Trophy hunting , to increase revenues that can be reinvested in parks, but might fuelling poaching and trade in ivory etc.
Chtoniid,
IMO it is ” better” to eat some wild animals rather than eating factory farmed animals.
Methink it is more animal friendly, the animal has lived and roamed around in freedom and I think it is as well more eco-friendly. Thinking about the latest FAO report on livestock, biodiversity, climate cahnge, degradation of farmland, forests etc. It all pointed out how the livestock industry was one of the biggest threats to biodiversity etc.
I think it is worth remembering that during the wave of poaching in the 1980s, elephant populations in Southern Africa increased under a management system that used: trophy hunting and legal trade in ivory and elephant leather.
Poaching was much less of a problem than say, Kenya, where local villagers would lead poachers to elephants to rid them of these pests. In Botswana and Zimbabwe, local enforcement by villagers discouraged poaching.
The permitting system implemented under the CITEs Appendix II listing also seemed to work in this region- not fool-proof of course- but nothing is. Still, much less illegal ivory made it into the export stream from the south.
This reinforced a lesson we had already absorbed with crocodiles. If you have a halfway decent monitoring system (important to limit laundering), a credible level of law enforcement, then legal trade does not ‘stimulate’ poaching. Rather the legal trade is then able to operate to crowd out the poachers. The other key lesson from crocodiles, is the best way to get people to share their habitat with large dangerous animals, is to make the animals worth money.
Now with ivory prices reaching $750 per kg, it is discouraging to realise how few people in the NGOs have worked out the ban is counter-productive. Its function now is basically to bribe people to get into the poaching racket. We implement policies to enrich the corrupt, and oppose policies that may benefit local rural communities instead. And as poaching increases, blame is shifted all over the place- its the poor monitoring or the fault of the Namibians. Nobody seems to have quite worked out that poaching is on the rise again because opponents of legal ivory trade have instead, come up with a fantastic way to make criminals even richer.
Motty is an expert on fire, forests, elephants, genetics and anything else you can think of. Schiller thinks humans and wild animals are natural, but domesticated animals are unnatural (manmade? next you’ll want patent rights over genetic code and right of god code over my ovaries).
And on the others we find here, heh. well… Quiggin has a convincing case for substituting “sceptic” and “denialist” with “delusionist”. There are those who are genuine, scientific sceptics. And there are those who set out to obfuscate and deceive.
The NGOs are promoting the “nationalisation of wildlife” in the same way those pathetic old campus Trotskyites wanted to nationalise the means of production. It will fail for all the same reasons. But not before the display of some of the lowest forms of humanity.
There will be scapegoats, there will be purges, there will be gross negligence and there will be an absurd triumph of dogma over practical good sense. And some time before their results completely bottom out there will be some sort of wildlife great leap forward where tokenism will prevail and the last of the sensible will be persecuted.
Aaahh! The brave new green utopia.
‘Aaahh! The brave new green utopia.’ – Ian
As opposed to Motty and Thurkettle’s brave new zoo-topia wildlife tokenism……
Ann
I tend to agree- I can appreciate that intensive agriculture has made a lot of food much more accessible to human populations.
But demand for wild food can create incentives to preserve habitat and sustain animal populations. I would concur that often, ‘harvest’ of wild animals appeals more at an animal-welfare level.
At an eco-system level, kangaroos use less water, are efficient grazers (I also imagine as non-ruminants, they produce less GHG) and don’t damage the soil in the same way as cattle. They don’t require the same inputs of pesticides, antibiotics etc that cattle do.
The meat is also very high quality. Shame about the price…
Ian
behind the rhetoric, there is a nationalisation issue. A CITES listing does mean that countries- range states if you will- lose property rights to their wildlife and give these to the international community. These rights are taken from local communities, assumed by the state and control-rights get given to international parties.
Given how difficult and expensive it is to get a downlisting in CITES (you need to put together a 2/3 majority coalition at a meeting), this loss can extend for a long time.
For all the talking up of the benefits of Kangaroos and their meat there are few serious problems as well. The flip side of this so-called grazing efficiency claim is that ‘Roos have a very poor meat to bone/offal ratio. The live weight to dressed weight conversion for cattle is roughly two to one while with ‘roos it is more like three to one.
And unlike cattle, ‘roos respond to favourable conditions, not by getting meatier but by producing more and more ‘roos. It has taken 5000 years of selective breeding to obtain the efficiencies exhibited by cattle. But the fundamental design characteristics of macropods are not well suited to producing fat, docile animals with high meat to bone ratios.
A good point on the CITES listing, Chthoniid. One must suspect that a large proportion of so-called poaching may well be nothing more than traditional users exercising their existing use rights in circumstances where NGOs and central governments have taken them away but provided no alternative food supplies.
Ian
– your basic suspicion is correct. Most poaching is either for domestic consumption or a consequence of human-wildlife conflicts.
E.g. various species can be bought in markets in PNG (e.g. the dugong in the south) and enforcement can only charitably described as lax.
Some of the challenges here are a consequence of the ‘nationalisation’ of wildlife- or if you prefer a less rhetorical explanation- applying conservation strategies developed in the wealthy North to these countries. E.g. for some biziarre reason, PNG is trying to reach the target of 5% terrestrial area as reserves, aiming evcentually for the IUCN 10% target. The fact this is impossible because 97% of PNG’s area is community-owned, hasn’t proved a hindrance to this ambition.
The Western ‘fences and fines’ approach can destroy the authority of local communities to manage and enforce their rights to wildlife.
This can be escalated by access to better technology (rifles, scuba gear) or increasing human populations.
Much of the poaching is due to depletion of fisheries, espacially in West Africa by the EU fishing fleet. So northern rich countries are also blamed for the increase in trade of bush meat.
Another reason is war. Rebels in Kongo and West Africa are poaching elephants for meat as well for paying the costs of war. The elephant population in Virunga reserve ( Kongo?) has decreased dramatically due to poaching by rebels.
BTW, how does kangaroo meat taste, just curious…?
Ann,
Someone I know had it in a restaurant not too far where I live (here in Tokyo). They weren’t exactly raving about it, but then, like whale meat, everyone has their personal tastes 🙂
Ann
kangaroo is a typical game meat, very lean. IMO, best tried after a marinade overnight, then cooked very quickly for roughly 2 minutes a side at a high temperature. Given the lack of fat, overcooking it will turn it into ‘tough leather’. So, medium-rare should have it almost ‘melting’ in your mouth.
Thanks Chthoniid and David,
I know they sell kangaroo meat in some stores in Sweden. I will actually try it! If I’m not mistaken I have also seen croc meat, but dunno if it is a ban on croc meat?
Anyway, sometimes during Christmas time you can even buy brown bear meat, I’m not especially found of that… I stick to moose and reindeer, excellent meat , lean and tender , enviro-friendly as well as ” animal friendly”.
Ann
fwiw, there is no ban on crocodile meat but it suffers a low supply. Australia even imports crocodile meat (from PNG) because they don’t produce enough :-).
The low supply means prices are inflated- in NZ it’s about $80 per kg in contrast to $30 per kg for roo. So most places won’t stock it here (but will import it on special order).