AID trophy-hunt funding jogs use vs. abuse issue

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 9, 1996 | by Gayle M.B. Hanson

The feds are locking tusks with animal-welfare groups over a program that enables detitute Africans to earn a living - through blood sport involving a formerly protected species, the splendid African elephant.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, or AID, is funding elephant-trophy hunters in Africa to the tune of $5 million annually. In addition, AID funds are being used by recipients to lobby for the resumption of the ivory trade. At least that's how the Humane Society of the United States, or HSUS, sees it. The nation's second-largest animal-welfare agency is highly critical of AID's support of CAMPFIRE - an acronym for Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources. A Zimbabwe-based rural development organization, CAMPFIRE works to place responsibility for wildlife management in the hands of local districts and communities, but the HSUS sees this as supporting a program for "elitist white men" to shoot elephants, all the better to decorate their dens with a pair of flapping ears and ivory tusks.

"We've known about the CAMPFIRE program for a long time," says Theresa Telecky, HSUS director of the wildlife trade program. "We didn't pay a lot of attention to it until we found out that our own government was supporting it. And now we say that things have got to stop."

CAMPFIRE, which began in 1989, has grown from helping to support 9,000 households in 1989 to about 103,000 in 1996. It gives impoverished people in the most rural regions of Zimbabwe the chance to earn a living through various wildlife industries. About 90 percent of the revenues generated by CAMPFIRE districts in 1995 were the result of leasing sport-hunting concessions to commercial operators.

AID officials quickly dismiss the HSUS' condemnation of CAMPFIRE, while saying that they take seriously any claim that AID funds are being used inappropriately. "The question of whether trophy hunting is bad or good is related to an issue of substance," says Tony Pryor, a natural-resources adviser with years of experience in Africa, both in Kenya and the Sudan. "We view it as a developmental issue and [the HSUS] can disagree with that, but it does not make it a legal issue. As to the issue of lobbying, our policy is clear. Our money cannot be used for lobbying as it relates to policy.

"What we've done is create a program which has actually encouraged putting elephants back on the land and created a decrease in commercial poaching," says Liz Rohay, CAMPFIRE's Washington liaison. "In areas where the annual income per household was $600, it is now $4,000." She adds that village elephant herds are studied carefully before a decision is made to make any animals available for hunting. And, the typical value per elephant is about $10,000.

The HSUS' condemnation of CAMPFIRE comes at a time when the notion of how best to guarantee the survival of the African elephant and other endangered species is being reconsidered as more and more nations adopt the principle that if wildlife is to survive, its maintenance must begin to pay its own way.

Even as some of the country's top fashion models shed their threads for an annual poster campaign in support of the radical People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, the bare truth is that the animal-rights movement is engaged in a worldwide battle about animal rights vs. animal use. The fight, which is pitting activist against indigenous people and government agencies against animal-protection organizations, continues to heat up in the United States and abroad. And while the animal-rights organizations may be able to grab the spotlight with their high-profile public relations, they increasingly are being questioned on the world stage.

In early November the International Fund for Animal Welfare, or IFAW, a Massachusetts-based animal-rights organization with 650,000 members worldwide and an annual budget of close to $5 million was denied membership status at the international Wildlife Congress in Montreal. The event was billed as the largest gathering of government agencies and conservation organizations since the Rio Summit. And, despite the desire of IFAW to gain a platform, more than 77 percent of government members and 66 percent of nongovernment members attending voted to deny membership to IFAW on the grounds that its goal of "preventing and abolishing all cruelties done to [animals] by humans" conflicted with the goals of the International Wildlife Congress.

"This was a huge victory for indigenous peoples around the world," said Rosmarie Kupatana, president of the Inuit [Eskimo] Circumpolar Conference, or IUCN, who attended the Montreal summit. "Organizations such as IFAW have no place in the [International Wildlife Congress]."

The North American Inuits are well aware that IFAW was founded in 1969 by Brian Davies, who was attempting to end the killing of baby harp seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The success of IFAW's antisealing campaign, aided largely by the infamous Greenpeace, film of a baby harp seal being slaughtered, devastated the Canadian Inuits, who saw their seal market collapse under the IFAW campaign.