Each profession has a set of fundamental goals.
Doctors try to prevent sickness and heal people, engineers design
and build, policemen protect people and apply the law, pilots keep
aircraft in the sky and try their best to land them safely.
The fundamental goal of
conservationists is to preserve and protect habitat.
All ecosystems are built on two main building blocks – habitat
(soils and vegetation) and climate. There is little - other than
have some control over carbon emissions - that we can do to manage
and manipulate climate, but we can exert and have a significant
effect on habitat. That should be our priority seeing that
everything else hinges on it. People readily fund and support
projects to save the endangered ..... whatever but we have lost the
plot. Species are endangered because spaces are endangered.
Endangered species are the symptom - the disease is loss of habitat.
It is pointless trying to save an animal species if
there is no habitat for it.
We, as conservationists I am ashamed to say, do not
practice what we preach about protecting and preserving habitat.
There are four and only four reasons for this:
We
have never been taught or have been misinformed as to what the main
aim of conservation is.
We have forgotten what our fundamental goal should
be and have become sidetracked with other issues.
We are afraid of challenging the establishment and
the current status quo. We find ourselves in a comfort zone – have a
steady job, reasonable salary, medical aid, pension fund and we do
not want to jeopardize our situation by confronting what we know (or
should know) to be wrong.
We could not care less.
Every professional conservationist could group him
or herself into one of these four categories.
Undeveloped habitat should be considered as
the most scarce and fast diminishing resource on the planet.
Unfortunately areas designated as "protected" (national parks,
provincial reserves etc.) are targeted – often by the very
custodians and guardians who should be protecting them – for
development. The development is usually associated with large scale
eco-tourism like the building of lodges, rest camps, roads and all
the amenities and infrastructure considered necessary to provide the
services expected by eco-tourists.
It is time to expose the myth that large scale
eco-tourism, especially when vehicle dependent activities are
utilized, is not consumptive. The reality is that it is one of the
most consumptive forms of resource utilization because it fragments,
divides and destroys habitat.
As wildlife managers we are often given reasonably
undeveloped wild habitat to begin with. Unfortunately habitat
impacting development soon follows, negating the very goal we set
out to achieve in the first place – the preservation of habitat.
Developing protected areas cannot be considered
progress it is regressive. Cancer is a terrible disease. It attacks
a single cell to begin with. It then spreads to tissues and organs.
Finally systems collapse and the person dies an uncomfortable and
oft agonizing death. The analogy is appropriate to developing
unspoiled wildland habitat for this is nothing more or less than
environmental cancer. Once begun it is unstoppable, relentless and
will eventually kill and destroy the system and that is why I am
appalled at the way our conservation areas are continually subjected
to unsuitable forms of eco-tourism that require significant material
infrastructure to support it.
I
wish to cite a current development as an example of what happens
everywhere even in our national parks.
There is a reserve bordering on the Kruger National
Park which used to be a provincial reserve but has now been handed
back to a community. The first thing the community now thinks of is
not preservation of habitat but how they can make money from the
reserve. This is understandable; it is a poor community with a high
rate of unemployment.
But now, waiting in the wings are the environmental
opportunists like hyaena with their business suits and attaché cases
containing contracts that will ensure that they enrich themselves at
the expense of the environment, waiting to exploit the situation.
It has now been decided that no less than four new
luxury lodges with a total of 120 beds are to be built on the
relatively small reserve. This is in itself an excessive overkill.
After a bit of investigating I discover that the community is
offered R7 million rand for the exclusive rights to
the reserve – this is how the environmental entrepreneurs market
their product to the rich and famous.
It sounded reasonable at first glance until I dug a
little deeper and discover that it is not R7 million per annum but
for a period of no less than 45 years! A quick bit of
arithmetic shows that this equates to no more than about R155 000
per year which is to use a rather common term "peanuts". Even if the
community receives additional money from a percentage of gate entry
fees that pushes their annual income up by an extra few hundred
thousand rands it is still a pittance.
This is exploitation of the first order - a new form
of colonialism where the naivety of rural people is taken advantage
of.
It reminds me of a story in the Bible where a young
man sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils. The other significant
fact is that the resources of the reserve are effectively
locked away from the community for a whole generation.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of all will be that the
developers will descend on what is a relatively undeveloped piece of
wild habitat and will carve it up and fragment it, put in new
infrastructure, camps, roads and all the paraphernalia that goes
hand in hand with open vehicle game viewing activities.
Let it not be said that these activities are not
non-consumptive forms of utilization because it consumes the very
thing that we should as a priority be protecting, namely habitat. It
is in fact a very high impact form of utilization. And so the cancer
spreads.
Of course they will conduct their Environmental
Impact Assessments. But let it be understood that the decision has
already been taken to go ahead.
The EIA’s are nothing more than a smokescreen for
"business as usual".
Habitat fragmentation is one of the greatest threats
to biodiversity worldwide and is considered to have two components:
Decrease in habitat type or all natural
habitats in a landscape.
Subdividing the remaining habitat into
smaller, more isolated pieces.
Roads are increasingly being identified as a severe
threat to sensitive wildlife and natural ecosystems. Roads block
movement of small and some large species of animals, isolate
populations into smaller demographic units, and expose large mammals
to poaching and harassment.
Road
kills of resident wildlife is a problem. In some areas it accounts
for the most deaths in medium and large sized mammals not to mention
plants and smaller animals that are often killed by off road game
viewing excursions.
Erosion from roads can lead to siltation of streams
and rivers. Possibly the greatest threats from roads is that it
encourages further development which leads to more habitat loss.
Many species of invasive plants colonize disturbed roadside habitat
and can spread and displace native flora.
Roads also require extensive maintenance and this
results in huge quantities of sand being taken out of riverbeds or
the establishment of borrow pits which leads to their own set of
environmental impacts. The habitat taken up by eco-tourism road
infrastructure in one of our largest national parks is more than
60 000 hectares. That means 60 000 hectares of habitat has been lost
in addition to the other negative effects caused by road
construction and maintenance.
Road construction and use apart from the physical
barrier it creates may have a number of additional negative effects.
A decision to build a new or upgrade an existing road should be
carefully considered and the need for critical assessment is
especially strong where habitat of threatened or endangered species
is involved. In many such instances there is a strong case for
preventing new roads from being built and it may also be advisable
to close and rehabilitate existing roads.
There is an alternative to this high impact type of
eco-tourism which could generate far more income for the community
per annum, allow them access to resources and which has a far
smaller environmental impact allowing habitat preservation to be a
viable proposition. What it amounts to is a way of generating high
per capita income for the least amount of environmental impact (i.e.
preservation of habitat). The alternative is hunting. This reserve
bordering on the Kruger National Park has a substantial resident
game population but in addition to this has a lot of spillover of
animals (including the "big 5") from the KNP. It is ideally suited
to offer real African hunting safaris. All that would be required to
accommodate hunters would be one or two small tented
safari camps. No additional infrastructure, no additional roads etc.
The tented camps could be completely portable – leaving no footprint
and having a virtually negligible impact on habitat.
The community could, very conservatively speaking,
easily generate 3- 4 million rand per annum from controlled safari
hunting. This may not sound as much as the R7 million being offered
by the environmental entrepreneurs to begin with but compare what
they offer to what the community could earn over a period of 45
years from hunting. R135 – R180 million as opposed to the pittance
being offered them of R7 million?
The surrounding community could also benefit from
the meat and other wildlife products generated by the hunting. They
would be able to enjoy tangible benefits of the natural resources
instead of being denied access to them for more than four decades.
Money is and always will be an issue but when it comes to
conservation it is not the essence. Preservation of
habitat is the priority; not developing tourism and other habitat
destroying and fragmenting infrastructure – especially those areas
specifically set aside as "protected".
Another stark reality of Africa is that the masses
will no longer tolerate natural resources being locked away behind
game fences exclusively set aside for the use of high end market
eco-tourists to drive around in, viewing wild animals from open game
drive vehicles. It is time for us to catch a wake-up call.
Of
course the animal rights groups would have a lot to say about the
"consumptive" utilization of wild animals from hunting. But they are
in fact a non-entity. One never hears them say
anything about habitat destruction and development of
natural wildland and so their bleatings and opinions are pointless
and meaningless; it is not that they, like so many people who lay
claim to being conservationists have also lost the plot, they have
never known what it was to begin with!
When will we wake up? One day we might discover that
it is too late. When the cancer has spread too far and ecosystems
founded on climate and habitat crash. Perhaps only then will we
understand what the supposed writer of a letter to George
Washington, a native "Red Indian", meant when he penned the
following:
"We know that the white man doesn’t understand
our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the
next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from
the Earth whatever he wants. The Earth is not his brother but
his enemy; and when he conquers it he moves on.
He kidnaps the Earth from his children. His
appetite will devour the Earth and leave behind a wasteland. The
sight of your cities pains the eye of the red man. There is no
quiet place in the white man’s cities.
No place to hear the leaves of spring or the
rustle of insects’ wings. The clatter insults the ears . What is
there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the
whippoorwill or the argument of the frogs around a pond at
night?
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind
darting over the face of the pond, and the wind itself cleansed
by the midday rain or scented with pinion. The air is precious
to the red man for all things share the same breath: the beasts,
the trees, the man. The white man doesn’t seem to notice the air
he breathes. Like a man dying for days, he is numb to his own
stench.
I am a savage and do not understand how the
smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo whom
we kill only to live. All things are connected. Whatever befalls
the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.
When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild
horses all tamed. The secret corners of the forest heavy with
the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by
telegraph wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle?
Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt,
the end of living and the beginning of survival.
The Earth is precious to Him, and to harm the
Earth is to pour contempt on its Creator.
 Cleve
Cheney is a
wilderness trail leader, rated field guide instructor
and the author of many leading articles on the subjects
of tracking, guiding, bowhunting and survival. Cleve has unrivalled experience in wildlife management, game capture and hunting, both with bow and rifle.
Click here to visit his site |
Continue to contaminate your own bed and you
will one night suffocate in your own waste."
