Africa 2100 Reality Check - Take Note Warns Ron Thompson !! Whether you like hunting or not is irrelevant to the SU debate: hunting vs eco-tourism. By the end of this century (2100) it will be Africas rural people who will determine how wildlife will be managed. U.N. statistics record the following: In the year 1900 there were 95.9 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa; by 2000 that number had increased to 622 million; and the projected population for 2100 is in excess of 2.5 billion. Poverty and unemployment are the two principal drivers of poaching - from guineafowl to rhinos & elephants. At the moment one-in-four people in South Africa are unemployed. In the rest of Africa the figure is much higher. Poachers - the people who pull the triggers - poach for survival. And that fact will never change in Africa. When the cooking pot is empty Africas people will find some way to fill it - without compunction. This being a fact of life in Africa how are we going to stop poaching in 2100 - when there will be four times as many people on this continent as there are now - when we cannot control poaching today? By 2100 (and beyond) the only wildlife surviving, and the only national parks in existence, will be those that contribute the most to the peoples survival. Instead of fighting about whether tourism should replace hunting as a land-use strategy, therefore, we should be trying to find an acceptable way to integrate the needs of Africas people with the needs of our national parks and wildlife resources - because it is THAT which will determine the issue in the longer term. And THAT - realistically - means a sustainable harvest of some kind. And the most lucrative kind of harvest is hunting. If we do not start treating our wild animals as wild animal products of the land that are used sustainably and wisely for the benefit of Africas people, the people will replace it with Domesticated animal products of the land (cattle, sheep and goats) that WILL provide them with survival benefits. To resolve the hunting vs eco-tourism debate, therefore, we have to look a little further than the ends of our noses. Ron Thomson on 06 November 2013 posted under comments @
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 15:45:05 +0000
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