Elephant War
(Page 2 of 3)
November/December 1996
By Allan Richards, Utne Reader
We are very fortunate to have CAMPFIRE, says deputy headmaster Mawonei, echoing the sentiments of other villagers in Mola. "We were able to build our primary school, which holds over 790 students, with CAMPFIRE money. We are still overcrowded with students--there's a ratio of 40 students to one teacher--and some students have to walk two hours from home to the school because we can't afford to buy a minivan to transport them. But CAMPFIRE money helps to educate many students and to care for their health."
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CAMPFIRE appears to benefit the elephants as well. Drought, competition for land, and poaching had reduced the elephant population in Africa from 1.3 million animals in 1979 to fewer than 700,000 in 1987. Since the CAMPFIRE program was instituted, Zimbabwe's elephant population has increased by nearly 55 percent, to over 82,000 in 1995. "When rural communities are allowed to benefit from harvesting the wild, they try to protect the wild, not destroy it," says Jon Hutton, projects director of Africa Resources Trust, a voluntary organization that helps implement the CAMPFIRE programs.
Animal rights groups, including the Humane Society of the United States, don't see it that way. Writing in The Wall Street Journal (July 23, 1996), Wayne Pacelle, the Humane Society's vice president, succinctly stated his organization's position: "If we could shut down sport hunting in a moment, we would." The Humane Society is actively trying to end funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has pumped more than $5 million into CAMPFIRE since its inception. Teresa Telecky, director of the Wildlife Trade Program for the Humane Society in Washington, D.C., says, "We want to help people rise from poverty, but not [through] trophy hunting. . . . We'd rather see them earning money from cottage industries such as farm fishing and shoemaking." The organization contends that rural communities would profit more if USAID gave them the money directly instead of pumping it into the CAMPFIRE program.
But Rob Monro, general secretary of Zimbabwe Trust, the nonprofit organization that helped create CAMPFIRE, says that outright aid from the West historically has been an ineffective way of alleviating poverty and encouraging community development. He insists that CAMPFIRE promotes self-reliance, and that by utilizing indigenous resources in a responsible way it enables rural communities to help themselves.