Elephant War
(Page 3 of 3)
November/December 1996
By Allan Richards, Utne Reader
"The top priority in Africa is human survival, not conserving animals, and an elephant carcass can feed a lot of hungry people," Monro says. "Protectionist and animal rights groups seem to be concerned with the survival of a few `megaspecies' like elephants and whales instead of conserving all of nature, which also includes people. These groups are a major threat to CAMPFIRE. They are highly influential in policy circles and are opposed to any form of commercial use such as hunting. This opposition--which includes trying to block funding from USAID--could reduce the economic value of wildlands to rural people and act as a disincentive for them to maintain wild species. We don't tell the West how to use its resources; people in the West shouldn't try to dictate to us how to manage ours. It's a form of ecoimperialism."
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CAMPFIRE does have its overseas advocates. "At a recent conference in Washington," says Hutton, "we had representatives from the hard right, such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute--they like us because CAMPFIRE is about the privatization of wildlife--sitting at the same table with a group of hard left academics who like us because CAMPFIRE has a strong communal element to it. Unfortunately, the Green movement confuses animal welfare with conservation. They've taken the human element out of conservation, which is really how it has worked in the United States, isolating and preserving. This is Africa; this isn't the United States. People here have to live with wildlife, and elephants have to fit in with the people."
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