Original von pippa
but is there such a thing like a people's "right" to kill for sport or fun? the question is: who OWNES the wildlife? the government? the citizens? the minister for environment? NO! it's our all heritage which doesn't belong to anybody except our children and grandchildren. we europeans and you americans should have learned this lang ago! we all had fantastic wildlife here but depleted it ! now they travel to africa to do the same there!

Pippa,
it was not the killing for fun that depleted the wildlife in America or Europe. It was the society that decided that bears and wolfs are a threat to the growing villages and their herds. The society ordered the hunters to go and kill all our wildlife and continues to do so (as we saw with the first bear returning to Germany after some 200 years).

The same is happening in Kenya. The society is growing and with it the human-wildlife conflicts arise besides poachers who are trying to make a good living.

I agree with you that wildlife is our alls heritage. But what does that mean? Who should take care of it? We humans are the very threat ourselves with our pure presence. Unfortunately mankind proves every day that it can not get enough and hence we need to control the greedyness of mankind.

Someone has to activly stand there and stop these people from taking what belongs to all of us (or no-one if you prefer).

But we pitch up as Mr. Smart-guy and tell the locals that they shouldn't mind about the odd cow or family member being killed by wildlife whilst on the other hand, we never managed to solve this problem in front of our very own house. We killed all wildlife in America and Europe and now we want to know better? How can we ask locals to stay out of buffer zones and wildlife corridors without having an answer to the question of where they should go instead?

And simply declaring the buffer zones as nomans land and world heritage still doesn't protect it. Someone will have to stand there and protect it. And this someone wants to live on something, so who is going to pay him for having bullets flying around his head?

Let´s take the situation as it is now. NOBODY is allowed to kill wildlife in Kenya. It is illegal!! Yet, it is happening and not too little. In my opinion the rudimental question is not who should be allowed to kill wildlife, but how we can stop illegal poaching and human-wildlife conflicts.

One way I have never heard anyone mention is by paying a bounty to those good citizens who turn in their fellow villagers who poach and snare. They could notify KWS, who would have to assure that the reporter remain anonymous. But if KWS found ivory, pelts or meat on the individual or in his home reported, the person who reported would be paid for the information. The poacher or snarer would suffer severe consequences. If KWS could be trusted to keep the reporter anonymous and to pay the reporter in a timely manner I think many people would report poachers, snarers and suspicious people from their village if they knew they would be protected from retaliation.

KWS also has to get their act together and openly solicit donations. I have tried for five years to get them to connect with a secure website such as Verisign or WorldPay on their website so people could make donations with their credit cards to help finance some of the things they need to do. No-one at KWS has done it yet. There are thousands of people all around the world who would be very happy to contribute to KWS to help preserve the wildlife if there were an easy way to do it. With extra money coming in, they could afford to hire more rangers, purchase new equipment and do many things that would ultimately help protect the existing wildlife. They might even have enough money to hire mercenaries who would gladly walk the parks and kill poachers.

Those Kenyan people who do love their wildlife have to try to get rid of the government authorities who don't care a damn about the wildlife or the people and get some caring, understanding people in office. All the newspaper articles say that the majority of Kenyans love wildlife and don't want it killed. If this indeed so, they need to try and find politicians with the same mindset and help get them elected.

As you say, there are no easy answers. However, it sound to me like you are leaning towards bwanamich's way of thinking and this is disappointing. Let's say bwanajoe opens a hunting area and is allowed to kill 10 elephants a year. Even if bwanajoe sticks to that 10 elephants a year rule (and many hunting reserves don't stick to it) that is killing 100 elephants in 10 years. Multiply that with every hunting reserve in Africa and you will soon have decimated the elephant population which is now down to 500,00 from 3 - 4 million.

Bwanamich has stated that there is a difference between hunters and shooters. Most of the people I know of are shooters. Suppose they shot at an elephant and wound it. It runs off and gets out of the reserve where the hunter can't go. Do they cross into "illegal" hunting area to kill it or do they let it go? A wounded animal is far more dangerous to the indigenous people than a healthy one. Just as there are unscrupulous people in any field, there are unscrupulous people in the hunting field also. How does anyone control what they are doing? If KWS can't control what goes on in the parks, how on earth would you expect them to control/oversee what happens in the hunting reserves? Who decides how much money the people living near the reserves will make per year? Does the government set the rate for the reserve to pay the nearby people or does the reserve set whatever they feel like paying?

As I said there are just no easy answers. But you can't convince me that killing more animals is the way to go. You are just reducing the numbers even further - no better than the native who snares or illegally poaches. It's just that one makes a huge sum of money doing so where the other makes peanuts.

About donating money to KWS:

I will mention this fact to Nico the next time we speak and see if he has contacts to those people at KWS that are in charge of the website for online donations.

You definately have a point there.

About the community helping find poachers:
I doubt that the community can help much because most poachers are not locals. They are from all over Africa, recently mainly from Somalia. But maybe it could become a kind of source of income if they roam about looking for poachers to give KWS hints.

About me leaning towards bwanamich´s way of thinking:

Under one single condition yes, otherwise no. This single condition is that we can be 1000% sure that the hunter will stick to the allocated numbers and protect wildlife from poachers and locals AND PROVIDED WE DO NOT HAVE ANY BETTER SOLUTION!!!

Why? It is simple: If now poachers randomly kill 100 elephants in a single area per year and a hunter could stop this whilst killing 10 selected (old, ill, infertile etc.) animals, this would safe the lives of 90 healthy young elephants which can give birth to more. Hence you will have a drastic increase of population.

Of course, this calculation only works out, if we can be sure that the hunter sticks to the number of animals allocated and does his job in protecting wildlife from poachers. The point is that hunting "replaces" poaching, not kill even more animals additionally.

The allocated numbers need to be controlled by a trustworthy organization, most likely KWS. I am sure bwanamich can fill us in on details about this.

I see these 10 elephants as a sacrifice to save the other 90. Of course, if you can provide me with a solution where I don't have to sacrifice any animal, I would be the last to support hunting.

For details on how many people are shooters or hunters, you better ask Bwanamich