Africa is home to more large mammals than all other continents combined. It is especially rich in hollow-horned ruminants (family Bovidae), with 75 species out of a world total of 120 species. Seventy-two of the African bovids are antelopes. Their potential as a source of food is tremendous, yet equaled or even surpassed by the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) and several species of non-ruminant ungulates, notably the hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), warthog (Phacochoerus aethiops), common zebra (Equus burchelli), and until very recently, the elephant (Loxodonta africana).

My own primary interest in these animals lies in research on the socio-ecology of free-ranging African antelopes, and in the application of research to the conservation of African wildlife and ecosystems. The Antelope Specialist Group (ASG) of the Species Survival Commission, one of the commissions of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, is involved in a country-by-country survey of the antelopes, and in the preparation of regional conservation action plans. The concern of the ASG (of which the writer is Chairman) with the economic value of wildlife stems from the realization that wildlife conservation must yield tangible benefits to win popular support for keeping land reserved for wild animals.

Africa's human population as of 1995 is 719 million and increasing at the rate of three percent a year, the highest rate in the world; at this rate the continent's population will double within the next 25 years. Pressure to settle and farm unused land is continually building, aggravated by practices that transform grazing and cropland into desert, and forests into nutrient-deficient savanna. In the process, wildlife habitat has been cut at least in half within the last few decades. Many national parks are already islands surrounded by humanity.

Yet it is vital to preserve not only the parks, but as much of the wildlife habitat remaining outside the parks as possible, especially land bordering the parks, and "greenbelts" to connect wildlife areas and keep them from becoming faunal islands. Buffer zones and wildlife corridors are so crucial because many of the larger mammals have very large home ranges or are migratory. Unfortunately, virtually none of the existing parks are self-contained ecosystems; rather, most of them represent fragments of ecosystems, which once partitioned, can support only a fraction of the biomass that formerly existed.

THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF BUFFER ZONES

Buffer zones are places into which the natural surplus of wild animals produced in parks can disperse. The existence of a buffer zone helps reduce human impact on the park, including illegal settlement and hunting inside the boundaries. If dispersal is prevented, then active management and culling become necessary to keep wildlife populations within the park's carrying capacity.

Management then becomes very expensive and complicated, requiring regular game censusing and ecological monitoring, an efficient cropping operation, including selective culling, processing of meat, curing of hides, etc. Storing, transporting, and marketing these products present additional problems. Intensive management of this description is already carried out in the game parks of South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, most of which are now surrounded by game-proof fencing that curtails movement either out or in.

When surplus wildlife is free to disperse into a buffer zone, culling can be carried out by and for the benefit of the local people. Although it is necessary to set quotas and maintain supervision, this is far less complicated, time-consuming and costly than the culling operations carried out inside the parks.

But more important, permitting the neighbors to cull by traditional methods can turn foes into friends of wildlife conservation. When game is available to hunt legally, former poachers may become the most effective guardians of land designated as the exclusive hunting grounds of their village and tribe, because it is in their own self-interest.

Probably most of Africa's parks and reserves include land that formerly belonged to and/or was traditionally used by the local people. Often at least some of the land included in a park was expropriated without compensation, after which the people lost their hunting and other rights to this land. Small wonder, then, that the neighbors are often resentful of parks, which from their perspective exist mainly for the benefit of foreign tourists, the income from whose visitations has rarely been shared with the abutters.

Winning popular support for maintaining parks and keeping other land out of production is thus at once one of the most difficult yet essential prerequisites for long-term survival of Africa's natural resources. There could be no better way of building this support than by offering tangible benefits to the neighbors of parks and reserves, in the form of jobs, a share of the proceeds from tourism and sport hunting, and by permitting them to utilize renewable natural resources in areas reserved for the purpose.

Conservation and utilization are thus seen to be linked, being of mutual advantage to both human and animal populations:

• Wildlife populations produce a natural surplus.


• This surplus has to be removed to keep wildlife in balance with its food supply


• When dispersal is prevented, wildlife populations have to be actively managed.
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• Permitting cropping in peripheral buffer zones by traditional means is preferable to culling carried out inside the park, with attendant disturbance to animals and visitors.


• Opportunities to utilize the surplus foster support for conservation and for keeping buffer zone of undeveloped land where hunting is permitted.


• Sustained utilization depends on maintaining core areas where wildlife can reproduce in peace and produce a surplus that can then be cropped in surrounding hunting grounds.

THE DIETARY AND ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF "BUSHMEAT"
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In many countries of West Africa, wild animals are the main and often virtually the only readily available source of meat. Despite a drastic reduction of the large herbivores that inhabit savanna and arid-zone habitats and the burgeoning human population of West Africa, duikers and other forest antelopes, monkeys, rodents, birds, etc. account for most of the meat sold in markets, and along roadsides. Though subjected to heavy hunting pressure, forest wildlife is far more elusive and the common species have a good chance of surviving for as long as their habitat.

Example A. A survey of meat traded in the native markets of Bukavu, a large town in eastern Zaire (Richter 1986) found that 46,000 kg of "bush meat" were sold in a six-week period, of which forest antelopes (mainly duikers, Cephalophus spp.) made up 37%, monkeys 33%, and porcupine (Hystrix) 27%(!). Extrapolating from this sample, it appears that at least 400 tons of game meat is consumed annually by the residents of Bukavu, most of it cropped around (and in) Kahuzi-Biega National Park

Example B. The commercial value of bushmeat in Ivory Coast has been estimated at $100 million a year. Yet Government economic planners had never taken this very considerable fraction of the gross national product into account.

The 1987 Symposium on Wildlife Management in Sub-Saharan Africa

In fact, it is probably safe to say that until very recently no African government has considered the commercial value of bushmeat in its economic planning. However, in October 1987, a weeklong International Symposium and High-Level Conference took place in Harare, Zimbabwe, to consider Wildlife Management in Sub-Saharan Africa, and specifically to address "sustainable economic benefits and contribution towards rural development." The symposium was organized by the International Foundation for Conservation of Game (with a membership composed largely of hunters), and sponsored by the major UN agencies, intergovernmental, and non-governmental international organizations (FAO, UNESCO, UNEP, IUCN, CITES, OAU, EEC, SADCC, World Bank, World Wildlife Fund, and others). The 178 participants included representatives from most of the countries of the region.

The purpose of the symposium was to heighten awareness that the socio-economic values of wildlife, though generally overlooked in government economic-development plans, are already substantial in most countries, could be greatly increased with proper planning and management, and should be given due consideration in economic planning.

Judging from the presentations of the delegates, awareness of the economic potential of wildlife is already widespread, and most governments are eager to make profitable use of their wildlife by all possible means, including tourism, sport hunting, game cropping, game ranching, and game farming (especially crocodile and ostrich farming for hide and meat production).

Conspicuously absent were expressions of concern for preserving indigenous flora and fauna for its own sake, as part of a country's national heritage. In fact most speakers emphasized that the survival of wildlife and natural habitats in their countries depended on making wildlife utilization at least as profitable as other forms of land use.

THE LUANGWA INTEGRATED RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT (LIRDP)

In Zambia, a Government-sponsored project aimed at the sustained utilization of wildlife and other natural resources is already underway in a 15,000 sq km section of the Luangwa Valley (Bell 1986). The main beneficiaries are the 25,000 human inhabitants of the Mambwe Sub-District, within the Chipata District of the Eastern Province. The sub-district has been designated as the Lupande Game Management Area (4,800 sq km). The wildlife resources of the LIRDP consist of the South Luangwa National Park (9,050 sq km), which has in the past supported a biomass of large mammals perhaps as high as any in Africa.

The objectives of the LIRDP (quoting from a progress report by Bell 1986) are:

• To improve the standard of living of the people living in the project area through sustainable use of the full range of the area's natural resources, including agriculture, forestry, wildlife and water resources;


• to cover the costs of administration of LIRDP;


• without prejudice to the above, to provide revenues and other benefits at the national level.

What makes the Luangwa Valley project probably the most promising of its kind in any African country is the commitment of the central government to making the sustained use of natural resources the economic mainstay for the people of a sizeable area, and in mandating the cooperation of all the officials responsible for governing and administrating the district. The opportunity to attempt such an integrated project stems from the Government of Zambia's decision, a few years ago, to adopt a national policy of Decentralization and Diversification. LIRDP's objectives derive from a set of national policy decisions, as follows:

• The programs of government departments concerned with land use and marketing should be coordinated at the local level to produce a land-use program compatible with the particular socio-economic and ecological conditions in the area.


• The activities of non-government organizations in the area, including aid agencies, research agencies, wildlife utilization companies and the tourist industry, should be coordinated with the land use program at the same level.


• A mechanism should be developed for ensuring local inputs into decision-making with respect to land-use planning and the use of revenues and other benefits derived from the area's natural resources.


• Revenues derived from the use of natural resources in the area should be returned to the area for reinvestment in the local economy.

Bell (1986), the Co-Director of the Luangwa Integrated Resource Development Project, points out that these policies for the non-consumptive use of natural-resources may be applicable to extensive areas in other countries, "to those areas with significant non-agricultural indigenous resources which have been consistently under-valued in conventional development planning."

Mali's Wildlife Utilization Project

In fact, projects similar in objectives and scope to LIRDP have been undertaken or planned in a number of other African countries, usually in connection with the development of a National Conservation Strategy, the initiative for which stems from the World Conservation Strategy launched in 1980 by IUCN for the United Nations Environmental Program and the World Wildlife Fund.

For instance, an extraordinarily detailed plan for utilizing the wildlife of the West African savanna has been developed in Mali by the Department of Nature Conservation of Holland's Wageningen Agriculture University, in cooperation with Mali's Service des Eaux et Forêts. Jointly financed by the Government of Mali and the General Directorate for International Development of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the planning entailed three years of background ecological research (1977-81), followed by two years of analysis of the data and finally, publication of the results as a 109-page booklet.

The plan is to utilize the surplus of wildlife produced within the Boucle du Baoulé National Park and surrounding game reserves. Utililization is now taking place within an area of 2,400 sq km, under the close supervision of trained wildlife managers. On the basis of intensive analyses of the soils, vegetation, climate, the animals, the human population and their hunting methods, researchers calculate levels of sustainable utilization of each species on a yearly basis, both in normal and in drought years, at current and potential population levels.

The authors of the study (de Bie et al 1984) suggest that their data and conclusions are applicable to the Soudano-Zambesian savannas of all Africa from an ecological standpoint, and to the savannas of West Africa from the socio-economic and cultural viewpoint.



In his report on the Luanga Integrated Resource Development Project, Bell (1986) notes that, " . . . as a result of poor access, lack of infrastructure, and preservationist attitudes, the potential of the valley's resources has not been realized, while its most important wildife populations are being decimated by illegal hunting. Most of the valley's resources are underutilized, while local communities receive few benefits from those that are utilized, and remain disadvantaged. Wildlife resources of high commercial value are overexploited illegally, the profits being siphoned out of the area and even outside Zambia. Local communities have little incentive to discourage this illegal traffic."

There is hardly a wildlife area in Africa to which this statement does not apply. Unregulated hunting is the rule and not the exception, including poaching in most national parks, especially in pursuit of rhinos and elephants. The killing of black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) for their horns and of elephants for their tusks has already driven the former species close to extinction, and the latter, whose population was estimated at 1.5 million only a decade ago, has now been reduced to half that number.

Practically the only people to realize any economic benefit from the squandering of these invaluable wildlife resources are the poachers and the traders, and the bulk of the profits go to importers in Asian countries.

Thus, one of the most compelling arguments for encouraging the economic development of Africa's wildlife resources is to provide the strongest possible incentive for the governments and peoples of that continent to conserve their natural heritage - in their own self-interest.

References Cited

Bell, R. 1986. Progress of Phase I and Proposals for Phase II of the Luangwa Integrated Resource Development Project. Unpublished report to the Government of Zambia.

de Bie, S., C. Geerling, A. Heringa 1984. Recherche pour l'Utilisation rationnelle du Gibier au Sahel. Wageningen Agricultureal University, Dept. of Nature Conservation. (To obtain copies, write Box 8080/67800 ER, Wageningen, The Netherlands.)

Richter, W. 1987. Study of the sale of game meat in the town of Bukavu. Unpublished report to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit.