Edition 44: Autumn 2008

Johannes Haasbroek, operations director of Elephant-Human Relations Aid (EHRA), raises a warning about new permits issued for the hunting of desert elephants.

As a result of some of Namibia’s good conservation practices, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) recently issued the country a number of permits for the sale and export of trophy elephant bulls. Unfortunately, three of these were issued for a part of the Kunene region whose desert elephant population simply cannot sustain this level of hunting.

In the southwestern regions of Kunene surrounding the Ugab and Huab basins, the past era of poaching means that there are only six permanent breeding herds, with a total of 36 cows. Including the four migrating herds from the north and northeast that use this area on a temporary basis, the total only reaches 60. The number of young non-breeding males in the region varies from six to twelve, depending on the animals’ migration patterns. At the start of last year there were five large bulls (trophy size) counted in the area, and at the start of this year only three. With one of the bulls killed in the latest hunting being from the Huab, only two bulls are now left. And with one more outstanding permit around the Ugab left, this means that there will only be one large bull left. For an ideal breeding ratio with the region’s cows, there needs to be at least three times that number.

What also seems to be lost in this ‘utilisation of a resource’ is that mature male elephants play an important social role well beyond breeding age. They transfer knowledge to the youngsters, thus their eradication could lead to a social breakdown. Also, as the bulls are the ones that wander the furthest, discovering new resources, they facilitate the herds’ migrations before too much pressure has been placed on their immediate environment. Without this happening, there will undoubtedly be more conflict with humans who currently share the same resources. This could then lead to more elephants being shot as ‘problem animals’ (from September 2006 to September 2007, 12 large bulls have been shot in the greater Kunene region for this very reason). This domino effect could have disastrous consequences.

What also confounds me about this decision to issue permits for the Kunene region is the economics behind it. Hunters are prepared to pay around US$40,000 to kill an elephant (I don’t say hunt, as there is little skill involved – you can easily walk to within 10m from a large bull), and  over 70 per cent of that goes to the handful of hunters and outfitters.

The benefit of keeping these same elephants alive? In the Ugab and Huab basins, where three of these permits have been issued, there are eight camps and lodges, all specialising in bringing tourists close to desert elephants. Amongst these lodges 263 people from the surrounding communities are employed. These people earn a total of US$541,029 per year directly from elephant-related tourism. On top of this, every one of these lodges/camps also has profit sharing agreements, giving the surrounding communities on average 10 per cent of the price paid for every tourist sleeping in a bed. Surely, in simple economic terms, generating hunting revenue for a few is not worth the risk of jeopardising a long-term tourism industry.

And I want to make it clear that my argument isn’t simply against hunting – it is against the unsustainable killing of elephants in the southwestern Kunene region. In highly populous areas of Namibia like the northeast, trophy hunting far outweighs revenue earned by tourism, and the utilisation of wildlife as a resource gives a lot of benefits to the people living under the constant pressure of wildlife. Without this strategy, disgruntled community members could resort to poaching and revenge killing, and we could witness the death of many more elephants than if hunting were not permitted. However, this model does not apply for low-density areas like the southwest Kunene, where tourism is the main income base, and human-elephant conflict issues, like water point protection, are much easier to resolve.

In a day and age when we regularly witness the consequences of the terrible mistakes made by our forefathers on a global scale, can we afford to repeat their sins? 

EHRA (www.desertelephant.org) is a Namibian-based NGO that was established in 2003 to help communal farmers deal with elephant-human conflict issues in the southern Kunene region. As part of their work over the past four years they have completed 500 patrol days in the field, establishing a photographic database and GPS movement study of every elephant that lives in, or traverses, the area.