Ban on hunting is misguided

By:John M’jongola

WHILE Kenya misses out on the huge worldwide outdoor sports industry, that includes sport hunting, bird shooting and game fishing, the debate on whether or not to legalise sport hunting has become stale, unimaginative, illogical and repetitive.

Strangely enough, Kenya allows game fishing and bird shooting, but not sport hunting which is the biggest money earner and conservation tool of all. Meanwhile Botswana, Nambia, Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa rake in billions of shillings annually in hunting and conservation revenue.

Lost in this impenetrable debate (“Scramble for Africa’s wild life,” The EastAfrican March 5-12) is the need to bring Kenya’s wildlife policy up to date with the rest of Africa and international norms and away from the colonial rules where the government decided issues such as hunting for the entire country, by decree of remote authorities.

That is what radical conservationists like International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and others want to retain, so that they can command all Kenya’s complex web of wildlife users (from landowners to tourist lodges) to adopt a single, rigid wildlife policy. This is bad conservation at its worst. And it has failed.

KWS should implement a number of pilot hunting schemes with selected landowners and communities. Opponents like IFAW and wildlife experts such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and other UN affiliates can be invited to monitor these schemes.

Kenya has lost 70 per cent of its wild animals outside parks since the ban on hunting in 1976. Hunting therefore cannot be blamed per se.




There should be no countrywide lifting of the hunting ban, nor any total imposition, but selected projects to be assessed.

This will help landowners and communities choose the wildlife policy that suits their needs.

That is smart conservation and Kenya’s way forward.

Despite regulated hunting being a legal and valuable conservation tool that is used by most countries worldwide and endorsed by the most respected and senior wildlife bodies such as the WWF and World Conservation Union/IUCN, the matter in Kenya is wholly dominated by extremist conservationists.

They are spending millions of shillings opposing hunting in Kenya by every means.

Thus Kenyans have a weird impression that the only choices are a complete hunting ban, or else hundreds of foreigners will descend on the country and invade national parks, guns blazing away at all sorts of animals, endangered or not.

But the truth is that nobody has ever proposed the latter, not even hunters.

Reference:nationmedia