IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
| Wall, B.; Child, B. | |
| When does hunting contribute to conservation and rural development? | |
| 2009 Book Chapter | |
Around the world, hunting has proved to be a powerful tool to promote conservation when conducted in ways that are biologically sound within appropriate governance and institutional settings (Wall & Kernohan, 2003; Wall, 2005; Mahoney, this volume, Chapter 16; Booth & Cumming, this volume, Chapter 17). This chapter aims to define the characteristics of a hunting programme that promotes conservation and rural development, and which therefore earns the name 'conservation hunting'. The idea that the term 'conservation hunting' serves a useful distinction has several roots, but it has been furthest developed in Canada as a prototype tool to encourage the better design of hunting programmes (Wall, 2005). We believe it will eventually become a generic label for hunting programmes that share a range of characteristics that encourage conservation and contribute to rural economies. The primary focus of this work is recreational (or 'sport') hunting which is practised largely in the developing world by tourists from industrialised countries. This form of recreational hunting, in which the hunting tourist is very likely to return home with a trophy of his or her quarry (and is therefore often called 'trophy hunting'), has the potential to see very significant sums of money transferred from rich countries (of Europe and North America especially) to developing economies - and even more importantly, to remote rural areas where there are few alternative economic opportunities (Bond, 1999; Virk, 1999). Conservation hunting programmes in the context of tourist hunting aim to integrate the social, economic and ecological drivers of sustainability and to use a diverse spectrum of quarry species to make wild and remote lands more economically productive, thus creating opportunities for sustainable in situ conservation. Ultimately, the ability to use hunting to create sustainable conservation benefits and support rural livelihoods hinges as much on issues of governance as on any biological characteristic of the target species, a fact that is often ignored by wildlife managers. In view of this, we identify and contrast two major systems for the governance of hunting and by combining this with information on national governance characteristics establish a typology which explains, amongst other things, why the North American Model is unlikely to be successful in many developing countries. |
|
 |
PDF files are only accessible to Friends of the Cat Group. Joining Friends of the Cat Group gives you unlimited access and downloads in the Cat SG Library for one year, and allows you to receive our newsletter Cat News (2 regular issues per year plus special issues). More information how to join here |
(c) IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group ( IUCN - The World Conservation Union) |