Wildlife Conservation by Sustainable Use edited by Prins, H.H.T., Grootenhuis, J.G. and Dolan, T.T. 2000. Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston. xiv+496pp. ISBN 0-412-79730-5
Reviewed by Robin Sharp CB

Here is a rich mine of pickings for those who wish to conduct realistic and ultimately successful conservation policies in the African savannah. Unfortunately its length, scholarly density and price present major obstacles to its accessibility.

The book is a collection of some 20 papers, with summary opening and concluding chapters by the editors. They derive from a workshop at the Lewa Downs Conservancy in Kenya (whose conservation strategy is the subject of one of the papers) held, one infers, around 1997 and subsequently revised and prepared for publication over a lengthy period. The editors hint at the effort needed to bring the results into the public domain, including the takeover of the original publisher. Moreover, there is rich irony in the fact that while the workshop was held with the support of David Western, then Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, the foreword is by his immediate successor, Richard Leakey, who even by the date of publication had moved on to head the Kenyan Civil Service.

The question which the proponents (from Wagenigen University in the Netherlands) were trying to answer was whether the apparent conservation success of policies in Southern Africa to give wildlife outside protected areas an economic value could be effectively applied to the East African situation. To this end they assembled a group of people, mostly working in East Africa but with a sufficient sprinkling of Southern Africans, who included ecologists, hunters, tour operators, ranchers, veterinarians, game croppers, national park planners and economists. The book conveys the strong impression that members of the group genuinely interacted. For example, where issues of judgement came up polls were taken and the results are given, indicating a broad consensus without claiming unanimity. The result, therefore, is substantially more than the sum of a disparate collection of individual contributions.

There is not space here to summarise all the papers, but they are broadly arranged in groups. In the first, Stanley for Machakos, Heath for Laikipia and Szapary for Lewa describe Kenyan attempts to move from pure cattle ranching to wildlife conservancy or a combination of the two. They demonstrate that while wildlife populations benefit, neither cattle raising nor game cropping produce more than a minimal return (less than 1% of capital value) from land which now has a high value for dispersal into small parcels. Safari hunting, if permitted, would however substantially raise returns for far fewer animals harvested. The same point is made later in the study of game-use by Game Ranching Ltd, a Kenyan enterprise. Grootenhuis, Prins and Deodatus explore in some depth the interaction between wildlife and livestock in terms of disease transmission, reaching the perhaps surprising conclusion that wild animals are at more risk from livestock than vice-versa. The substantial decline of wildlife populations in Kenya's rangelands over 20 years is convincingly demonstrated by Ottichilo and colleagues, while Gichohi argues that Nairobi National Park is now at risk because the land into which its herds of herbivores disperse for much of the year is being rapidly converted into smallholdings. Switching the focus to Tanzania, Leader-Williams gives an authoritative account of the way in which colonial era policies centralised the control of wildlife resources and allowed few benefits to flow to local people, even though trophy hunting with its high economic return was permitted. He outlines a new strategy for devolving control of wildlife resources to local communities, which was being adopted at the time of the workshop, but we are left to speculate whether it has had any success.

The following chapters are meant to indicate solutions, though they vary enormously in style and substance. G. Child and L Chitsike of Zimbabwe argue powerfully that ownership of wildlife by individuals or communities and the removal of perverse pricing incentives are vital to successful conservation. They have the evidence to prove it. Hurt and Ravn present a mass of detail about the potential returns from including the safari hunting option in any use strategy, demonstrating that it produces an income per hectare some 7 times higher than that from cattle or game ranching. Tourism can generate even higher returns, as shown by Earnshaw and Emerton, but only in areas which are scenic and have very high concentrations of wildlife. B Child uses case studies from Zambia and Zimbabwe to describe how changing wildlife from a public to private good can provide the incentive to protect and increase its populations.

But perhaps the most valuable chapter in the volume is the penultimate one where B. Child applies the lessons of the Southern African experience to East Africa, drawn from the contributions to the workshop. The consensus was that if the degradation of wildlife populations in Kenya and Tanzania, both in the Parks and in the rangelands which interact with them, is to be reversed, the essentials are enlightened governance, the removal of perverse incentives, especially those promoting agriculture and local ownership and use. The case is well made and the need to act on it is urgent, but one fears that these insights still receive scant attention in donor strategies and the heated debates in the international wildlife convention meetings.

(This review first appeared in Oryx, Vol 35 No 2 April 2001.)

Robin Sharp CB is Chair of the European SUSG.

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