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An Elephant in the Room:Okavango Safari Hunting asEcotourism?Catie Gressiera
a The University of Melbourne, AustraliaPublished online: 12 Nov 2012.
To cite this article: Catie Gressier (2014) An Elephant in the Room: OkavangoSafari Hunting as Ecotourism?, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 79:2, 193-214, DOI:10.1080/00141844.2012.723016
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2012.723016
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An Elephant in the Room: Okavango SafariHunting as Ecotourism?
Catie GressierThe University of Melbourne, Australia
abstract Safari hunters’ acute awareness of the widely held negative perceptions oftheir practice has led to their development of strong justifications and defensive asser-tions in favour of hunting. Far from being a primarily destructive practice, they claimthat safari hunting in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, can be seen as an exemplaryform of ecotourism, which benefits local communities, facilitates environmental con-servation and provides the ultimate nature experience for participants. While researchsupports their claims to an extent, the ethical quandaries evinced by hunters them-selves, the complex dialectic between local and global controls, and the elite, racialisedand gendered nature of hunting speaks to a more complex and conflicted situation.
keywords Trophy hunting, ecotourism, conservation, anthropology, Okavango Delta,Botswana
Introduction
A48-year-old business owner, Michael Johnson (a pseudonym – as withall names in this paper), and his wife, Marie, flew from Texas, USA, toMaun, Botswana, in June 2007. From Maun – the Okavango region’s
capital – they took a small charter plane to the first of the tented camps inthe 500,000 hectare Okavango Delta concession in which they were to spend14 days on a hunting safari. They were met at the airstrip by Tony, theirwhite Motswana (citizen of Botswana) professional hunter, Dhabe and Max,their Bugakhwe tracker and driver, respectively, and me, an Australian anthro-pologist. After loading everyone into the vehicle, we drove for an hour throughthe bush to camp where the 10 Batswana staff welcomed the clients by perform-ing several songs, before introducing themselves and shaking hands with thedelighted guests. The Johnsons had bought licences to hunt one each of
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buffalo (Syncerus caffer), wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) and warthog (Phaco-choerus africanus), as well as several antelope, including kudu (Tragelaphus strep-siceros), impala (Aepyceros melampus), tsessebe (Damaliscus lunatus) and redlechwe (Kobus leche).
Safari hunting in the Okavango conforms to the principles, practices andethics1 of ‘fair chase hunting’, a form of sport or trophy hunting whereby wildanimals – those who take flight from or will attack humans – are hunted inunenclosed areas and are thus able to flee the hunter, who is on foot (McCallum2005: 212). For the most part, I remained in the vehicle with Marie, while thehunters set out into the bush. On day nine, however, Marie and I accompaniedthe men on a long hunt. The day started in the bitter cold of sunrise and, afterbreakfast, we set out in pursuit of red lechwe. This species of antelope hasadapted to life in the floodplains, where they graze often knee-deep in water.We left our shoes in the vehicle and began to wade into the cold waters ofthe floodplains. We cautiously approached the herd attempting to remainhidden behind termite mounds and shrubbery. After an hour of stalking inthe icy water, our legs were numb except for the discomfort of the spikygrasses that stabbed into our feet. I was very alert and a little nervous wadingthrough the water, as we had already seen a large crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus)that morning. When we were within 70 yards of the herd, Tony ascertained thatthe males within shooting distance were immature, rendering them an unethicalquarry to pursue and undesirable trophies. We continued our approach until theherd became wary of our presence, was spooked and moved away.
We quit the floodplains and headed for dry land. Walking single file throughthe forest of a palm island, the vegetation was dense and visibility poor. Tonyled with his rifle slung over his shoulder, followed by Dhabe. Marie and I fol-lowed, and Michael, also bearing a rifle, chivalrously took up the rear position.A few moments after entering the forest, we startled some warthogs that boltedin fear, a wise decision on account of the licence in hand. Deeper into the island,we entered a clearing and passed a lone bull elephant grazing, a somewhatnerve-wracking experience when on foot. We saw many more animals overthe next hour, including zebra, impala and wildebeest, and Michael was particu-larly fascinated by a snake skin we found shed by a Mozambique spitting cobra(Naja mossambica).
By midday, the sun was burning hot and the clients, unused to extendedperiods of physical exertion, were sweating and straining under the weight ofrifles, cameras, water bottles and binoculars. We left the forest and Tonycalled Max on the radio to come and collect us. After a relaxed picnic lunch
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in the shade, we spent the afternoon driving around looking for kudu, a notor-iously elusive and strikingly beautiful antelope. We saw one family of kudussoon after setting out, but the males were immature. At 15:45, Tony spottedanother kudu. Again it was immature. At 17:15, Dhabe skilfully spotted a bigmale kudu hidden deep in the bush. After Tony confirmed that it was matureand the horns an attractive trophy, we drove on for several minutes before stop-ping the vehicle at a sufficient distance to avoid alarming the kudu. Tony,Dhabe and Michael set out on foot. After half an hour, we heard the crack ofthe rifle echo through the bush. We drove over to find that Michael had shotthe kudu cleanly through the shoulder, hitting its vital organs and killing itrapidly.
At the site of the death, Michael sat quietly stroking the kudu’s flank andrunning his hands along the horns. He did this after every kill on the safari,explaining this behaviour as follows:
Once it’s done and the animal is down, almost without fail, I’m a little sad. There’s areverence for the animal I’ve killed, the life I’ve taken. That affects me a little, it chokesme up a little, and I want to spend a little time with that feeling.
While Michael sat quietly with the kudu, Tony hacked away the surroundinggrass with a panga (large knife) to improve visibility for the photos. Therewas blood trickling from the dead kudu’s mouth, and its bloody tongue lolledout. Tony tucked the tongue back inside its mouth and covered the blood onthe ground with sand to ensure the photographs were ‘tasteful’. While I hadalready seen a buffalo, impala and tsessbe shot on the safari, I was unsettledby the kudu’s death. To see this beautiful, graceful animal reduced to a bleedingcarcass weighed heavily on my emotions, and sat uneasily on my conscience.After photos were taken, Tony and Dhabe cut the large carcass in half andloaded it onto the vehicle. Back at camp, the horns were removed andtreated for the client’s trophy collection, the skin preserved with salt, and themeat and offal taken to the kitchen to be eaten by the clients and staff. Therewas virtually nothing left for the hyenas that hung around camp at night search-ing for scraps.
The next day, at the insistence of the company director, Tony somewhatreluctantly left the Johnsons in order to commence a safari with a group ofRussian clients, who had purchased licences for six elephants, a leopard,several buffalo and many more animals in a neighbouring concession, while aless-experienced professional hunter came to guide the Johnsons for their
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remaining days. We crossed paths the following afternoon and Tony informedus with bemusement that one of the clients had requested a full mount of theelephant he had killed – that is, the taxidermist would recreate the life-sized ele-phant through treating and stuffing the entire carcass. So, by now, the taxider-mist’s work will be done and somewhere in Russia there is, quite literally, anelephant in the room.
I have provided this detailed description as anthropological literature con-cerning African safari hunting continues to be sparse, and the day-to-dayunfolding of a safari is unfamiliar to most. Not only is trophy hunting unfamiliar,but it is also confounding and abhorrent to many. My emotional and moral dis-comfort in relation to the kudu is a fairly typical response of an urban-dwellingperson unfamiliar and uncomfortable with direct experiences of killing, particu-larly killing for sport.2 Michael’s conflicting emotions, spanning from elationthrough to sadness, are not uncommon for hunters at the time of the kill,while Tony’s ambivalence about the preservation and display of an entire ele-phant carcass is not unusual for a local professional hunter, most of whomare far more interested in the experience of the hunt than in the collection oftrophies. The dynamics of the white, male professional hunter and clientsbeing supported by black Batswana in subordinate roles, while the womenwait for the hunters in the car are somewhat disturbing continuations of therace, class and gender hierarchies stemming from colonial times. Thesemoral, aesthetic, ethical and political discomforts are the familiar and obviousmeans through which African safari hunting unsettles.
In the face of the massive groundswell of anti-hunting sentiment globally,hunters have become skilled and articulate defenders of their practice. Theychallenge widespread negative assumptions through arguing that safarihunting provides a profound bush connection for its practitioners, supportsimpoverished local communities and facilitates environmental conservation.Consequently, they see hunting as an exemplary form of ecotourism; a prop-osition that will be unsettling to many proponents of this brand of tourism, pre-mised as it is on a culturally specific construction of that which constitutes anappropriate engagement with the ‘wilderness’, which tends to be characterisedby protectionist, non-utilitarian ideals (on wilderness, see Cronon (1996) andStronza (2001); on ecotourism, see West and Carrier (2004)).
In this paper, through taking seriously the hunting as ecotourism thesis, Iexplore how hunters conceptualise, justify and defend their actions in orderto try to understand how and why they continue to participate in such adeeply controversial practice, despite the widespread criticism they face. My
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approach resonates with Luhrmann’s (1989: 13) suggestion that ‘the drive toknow why it is that people do what they do, and how they can possibly doit, lies behind most anthropological endeavour’. I argue that hunters undertaketheir practice less in a sense of defiance than through a complex and coherentset of values, ethics and beliefs that endow them with a strong sense that theirpractice is not merely legitimate, but beneficial for the local community,economy and environment. While research supports the hunting as ecotourismthesis to an extent, I suggest that the paradoxes inherent in hunter’s relation-ships to animals, the ethical quandaries they articulate, and the elite, racialisedand gendered nature of African safari hunting challenge hunters’ overwhel-mingly positive discourse. The paper is organised around the three fundamentaltenets of ecotourism: connection to the environment, benefits to local commu-nities and contributions to conservation.
Before pursuing the hunting as ecotourism thesis, a note on methodology isrequired. Conducting ethnographic research into trophy hunting is not an easytask. The extremely exclusive nature of hunting safaris, where usually only theprofessional hunter, clients and camp staff are present, means that few huntersare prepared to change the dynamic or risk upsetting clients by having a thirdparty present – particularly a female in this male-dominated arena. Moreover,being subject to frequent criticism, hunters, unsurprisingly, can be wary infor-mants. Tony had become a friend over the course of my fieldwork and wasextremely generous to invite me on the trip described. Tony arranged for meto attend this particular safari in part to provide company for the principalhunter’s wife, Marie, yet it was also due to the fact that Tony had becomefriends with the Johnsons on a hunt five years previously and knew that they,unlike many clients, would be generous in welcoming an anthropologist,which indeed they were. On discovering I was writing about hunting, buthad never before hunted, Michael offered to purchase a licence for me toshoot an impala (approximately $500 USD). This offer was significant initself, as the Johnsons – unlike most hunting tourists – were not extremelywealthy (and nor, of course, were they in a position of financial hardship),but had been saving for several years for the safari. That Michael was preparedto pay this considerable sum for me as a researcher to experience huntingfirsthand is testament to the depth of conviction he has about the value ofthe practice.
Despite my appreciation of his generous offer, and my respect for phenom-enological approaches, I was uncomfortable with the prospect of shooting ananimal and so declined. Consequently, I write from the position of a non-
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hunter. Hunting, however, was a central interest during the course of my 13
months ethnographic research in the Okavango. In addition to living in thiscommunity long associated with hunting and being privy to the countless spon-taneous discussions and debates about hunting that took place daily, I con-ducted lengthy, loosely structured interviews with 19 professional hunters, aswell as many more discussions with citizens from Botswana’s many ethnicgroups, along with expatriates and tourists of diverse backgrounds, whichtogether represent a broad spectrum of views on hunting.
Unsettling the Nature–Culture Divide: Hunting as the Ultimate NatureConnection
When asked why they hunt, spending time in the bush and connecting withnature tended to be Okavango hunters’ primary response. On safari, pro-fessional hunters actively facilitate this connection through drawing theirclients’ attention to plant and animal species. On day three of the Johnsonsafari, Tony took Michael and Marie to a cluster of baobab trees (Adansonia digi-tata), which they photographed enthusiastically, while tasting the chalky fruit.Tony described the ways in which the various cultural groups of the region uti-lised the tree, from culinary and medicinal uses to the making of fabric from thebark. Michael was fascinated by this kind of information and embraced allaspects of the bush experience. He took his shoes off at night to feel theearth under his feet. He constantly attended to the fire and, with great content-ment, claimed he wanted to spend the whole night sitting by the fire ‘listeningto the critters’. He always rose in time to see the sunrise, constantly asked ques-tions and wanted to learn everything possible about the Okavango ecosystem.In this way, the environment was not the backdrop, but was integral to and con-stitutive of his hunting experience. While the Johnson safari demonstrates thatthe opportunity is certainly open for a deep nature experience on a huntingsafari, whether this is pursued is, of course, very much contingent on the indi-viduals involved. Tony described the Russian clients he guided subsequently asentirely focussed on shooting and uninterested in species beyond those theywere hunting. Despite having paid for a full 14-day safari, they flew outseveral days early after they had shot all the animals on licence.
For nature-seeking ecotourists, and particularly those travelling to Africa,meaning is sought through a return to nature and that which is seen as the orig-inal and fundamental way of being human. Cronon (1996: 80) describes howwilderness is constructed as:
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the natural unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It isa place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to thecorrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscapeof authenticity.
In this vein, in his study of a group of photographic tourists visiting theOkavango in the 1980s, Almagor (1985: 42) describes a dangerous encounteron foot with buffalo as the pinnacle of the tourists’ visit. They are in rapturesover the encounter, which they perceive as ‘the real thing’. A sense of dangercontributes greatly to a sense of authenticity, and the hunter not only thrillsin a sense of daily dangers faced, but also engages not merely as an observer,but as an actor within the food chain. In this way, hunting is seen by its partici-pants as providing an emotionally complex, physically challenging and intellec-tually stimulating journey out of the mundane (Hardin 2000: 448). Michael’semotional experience at the time of the kill, as well as his spending ‘a littletime with the feeling’ immediately after, epitomises the kind of ‘transcendentalmoment’ (Nash 1996: 42) that tourists seek, characterised by a sort of suspendedtemporality where all ceases to exist but the here and now (Cary 2004: 64).Hunting seen in this light is, arguably, the ultimate ecotourism experience.
In describing their participation in nature hunters liken themselves to preda-tors, with Michael suggesting: ‘you’re either categorised as predator, prey orparasite and, of the three, I probably fall into the predator category and don’twant to be in the other two!’ Hunters frequently utilise this kind of biologicalrhetoric to defend their practice against animal rights-based arguments. Inthis way, they construct nature as moral authority. In a hunting magazine,van der Walt (2004: 45) argues that
[r]ights originate from the human social contract. . . Neither a lion nor a mosquito or avirus has the ability to respect my rights and would devour me without a secondthought if given half a chance . . . Go tell a pack of wild dogs that it should sparean impala ewe in foal because the foetus has a right to life.
While sitting in the vehicle waiting for the hunters, I described to Marie anothercamp in the Okavango where guests ride habituated African elephants. To mysurprise, Marie was very upset by this saying it is cruel to ride elephants. Withinher system of ethics, to kill another animal for food is legitimate and natural, andyet to ride a wild animal is an aberration of the natural order. Marie’s views evi-dence that hunters do what they do because it accords with their set of symbolicunderstandings about the appropriate relations between humans and animals.
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Death is seen as a necessary aspect of life and renewal. As Dizard (2003: 128) putsit, ‘nature’s luxuriant fecundity is matched, must be matched, by an equal extra-vagance of death’.
Hunters reinforce their role as predators through the consumption of themeat procured in the hunt, which is served at every meal and is a central partof the safari experience. While the clients are served the prime cuts, the campstaff consume the remaining meat and offal. This helps to assuage any guiltthat may be felt by clients, and this was certainly the case with Marie, who,after hunting her first animal ever on the safari, said she had none of the feelingsof remorse she anticipated on account of the absence of waste. This is not to saythat professional hunters and clients are under any illusions about the motiv-ations of their sport. ‘Certainly what we’re doing you can’t call subsistencehunting’, comments Michael. ‘But no matter how it’s done, things die soother things can live. And I can go buy meat in a store, but something stilldies; I just wasn’t part of the process’. Indeed, hunters take the moral high-ground regarding meat consumption arguing that having blood on their ownhands3 from hunting is more honest than having someone else do the killing.They critique what they see as the hypocrisy of urban consumers, who areagainst hunting and yet consume great quantities of meat from animals thathave been reared solely for the meat market, often in poor conditions. This isa common topic of conversation on the safari, where gruesome details ofanimal rearing in the USA are contrasted with the free and natural existenceof animals hunted in the Okavango. Such discussions undoubtedly contributeto hunters’ feeling at peace with their practice.
The food chain argument becomes redundant, however, in the case ofhunting predators and other animals, such as elephant, that are not commonlyeaten. Dan works as both a professional hunter and a photographic guide. Hesays he cannot earn enough in photographic work to support his family andso guides a number of hunting safaris each season. His moral ambivalence ispatent:
I don’t enjoy hunting so much. I love hunting with the Bushmen [San], but then Ihunt something that we use. But if I hunt a leopard or elephant, that’s purely formoney. It’s blood money, and a lot of people hate me for it. But fucking hell, itpays the bills and pays for conservation.
As is the case with many Okavango professional hunters, the moral ambiva-lence for Dan is less in the act of killing than in the motivations for the hunt
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and the use to which the carcass is (or is not) put. The Johnsons shared similarethics and only hunted animals that were used for food both at home in Texasand during their time in Africa. Yet, not all hunters share this ethical orientation,and for many it is all about the trophy. Trophies can be read as symbols ofhuman domination over nature, which function to demonstrate physicalprowess along with superior social class, status and wealth. This reaches itszenith in the case of the display of an entire elephant. While one of theRussian party’s elephants was on its way to the taxidermist, wehappened upon another of the elephants they had shot. The tusks hadbeen removed and the rest of the enormous carcass rotted in the sun, withthe skin too tough even for hyenas to consume – a sight I again found ratherunsettling.
In arguing that humans enter the food chain through hunting, the animalnature of humanity is emphasised. Central to this is a focus on the hunter’s cor-poreality. A good hunter has highly developed physical skills. Stalking a warytarget requires the capacity for bodily control, balance and strength. Pro-fessional hunters describe their reliance on all their senses in the bush, inaddition to a heightened level of instinct, which is often referred to as a kindof primal sixth sense. Linked to the emphasis on the corporeal, embodied,instinctive aspects of the hunter are their claims that to be successful theyhave to imagine themselves as the animal. Thinking like an animal is mostoften described in the context of tracking, where there are often no physicallydetectable signs of the path the animal has taken, and the hunter needs tothink themselves into the animal’s skin to determine the direction it hastaken. This notion of man meeting animals at their level is commonly articu-lated in the hunting literature. Okavango professional hunter, Coogan (2006:111) writes, ‘I discovered the bush to be a great equalizer, reducing everythingto its most basic elements’. This sense derives from the unpredictability ofnature; there are so many variables that the hunter, no matter how well pre-pared, frequently faces the unexpected, the never previously witnessed, the con-founding. In this vein, Ortega y Gasset (1972) argues that hunting ‘alone permitsus the greatest luxury of all, the ability to enjoy a vacation from the human con-dition’ (in Cartmill 1993: 236). In this viewpoint, the human is immersed in thegreater system of nature as one small and equal component. The dominant pos-ition of humans evident in their vast impact on natural systems can be forgottenfor a moment as hunters enter the wilderness on foot and perform a primalengagement in the food chain. Anti-hunters would argue, however, that theirclaim to becoming one with the animals casts aside the very facts of dominating
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and killing animals using sophisticated technology in the form of rifles for theprimary purpose of sport, not sustenance.
The flipside of the desire to become one with the animals through strippingback the human is the elevation of animals to human level. In the Okavango, thedanger posed by animals allows them to be readily perceived as worthy quar-ries. The ‘big five’ – lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo – are the exemp-lary opponents, as the species valued most are those ‘which can be manipulatedin a way that they seem to play the game according to the hunters’ rules’(Dahles 1993; see also Marvin 2003: 56). All of the Okavango’s professionalhunters recall incidences of becoming hunted by the animals they are pursuing.When Michael and Tony were stalking a group of old male buffalos on the firstday, the buffalos doubled back and surprised the hunters from behind. This iscommon behaviour for buffalo, and one hunter writes, ‘harried by huntersand poachers by day, and lion and hyena by nights – these buff are experts atthe game’. (Ganyana 2004: 40, emphasis added).
While the fight in animals is most highly valued, the capacity to evadehunters through flight also renders an opponent worthy. The harsh nature ofthe African bush has endowed not only predators, but also herbivores withhighly evolved instincts to evade capture. This is particularly true of the Oka-vango where high predator densities ensure game, is perpetually alert, andthe animals do in many instances manage to evade the hunters. Huntingclients are never guaranteed their animal, and it is not uncommon for ahunter to go home empty handed. Indeed, Michael failed to bag a warthog,the licence for which he had paid a considerable sum.
The human-like qualities of intelligence and cunning in certain species on theone hand render them a worthy quarry and yet can also make hunters uncomfor-table about killing them. The taking of an animal’s life is viewed by most as invol-ving some level of ambiguity and few hunters would not have battled at somepoint with the moral complexities of their sport. As Dizard (2003: 125) writes:
Killing an animal is an emotionally complicated and conflicted act . . .[T]he successfulhunter, at the moment of the kill, is bathed in a flood of conflicting emotions – tri-umphal elation alternates with feelings of remorse, and both are mixed with aweand humility.
This description is similar to Michael’s explanation of his emotional response tokilling an animal. For professional hunters, desensitisation occurs over the years,of course, and for the most part they just get on with the job, but all recountmoments of reluctance to shoot in their careers. This is often described in the
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case of elephants where their intelligence and complex social structures makethem seem much like humans. A number of professional hunters describe upset-ting moments when an elephant bull is shot and other bulls use their trunks toattempt to pull the dead elephant back onto its feet. Hunters find this kind ofbehaviour very disturbing to witness, and Tony says the first time he saw thisit nearly led him to quit hunting altogether. Animals are often conceived ofin a hierarchy with those with the characteristics most akin to humans con-sidered far more serious to shoot (Dizard 2003: 104). Thus, bird shooting andfishing is taken less seriously than shooting large mammals by anti-huntersand hunters alike. The nature–culture divide arguably loses distinction asanimals and humans can be seen more on a scale of diminishing difference,rather than as two discreet groups.
For ecologically oriented hunters, then, their conceptualisation of their prac-tice as breaking down the barriers between nature and culture allows them tofulfil the ecotourist’s goal not only of deep immersion, but of active participationin nature. Their role as agents is legitimised through mobilising biological rheto-ric that constructs the hunter as a predator within the food chain, with theemphasis on meat eating justifying and normalising the killing and consump-tion of animals as part of the broader cycles of death and renewal. The challen-ging, dangerous and emotionally charged nature of the practice ensures thestrong sense of authenticity of experience that is so keenly sought within eco-tourism experiences, as hunters re-enact what they see as the most ancient andnatural of human vocations, which restores humanity’s rightful place in nature.Consequently, rather than being at odds with ecotourism, hunting can be readas its logical extension – the ‘other side of the ecotourism coin’, as Novelli et al.(2006) put it – on account of these shared goals, orientations and values.
Hunting and CommunitiesI now turn to the second tenet of ecotourism to explore hunters’ claims that
their industry has contributed more than any other to improving the livelihoodsof some of the most impoverished communities in the region; these are Botswa-na’s first people, the remote dwelling ethnic minority group of Okavango San(otherwise known as Basarwa Ba Noka or Bushmen) including the Bugakhwe,//Anikhwe and Ts’exa. The government has recognised the need for remotedwelling communities to benefit from conservation and to this end have estab-lished the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) pro-gramme, whereby communities are encouraged to form community-basedorganisations, which are then eligible to apply to utilise or sell wildlife quotas,
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as well as to lease Controlled Hunting Areas (CHAs) within which to conductphotographic and hunting safaris. While some operate safaris themselves, manyothers chose to enter joint management arrangements with hunting outfitters,subleasing their CHAs and selling their government apportioned huntingquotas to safari companies. At the time of my research, communities receivedall of the revenues raised, but in 2008 the legislation was changed, and now com-munities reap only 35% of revenues, with the bulk of earnings allocated to thecentralised National Environmental Fund to be invested in nationwide commu-nity projects (Rihoy & Maguranyanga 2010: 61).
Despite significant problems in the implementation and management ofCBNRM, research has demonstrated that a number of communities havereaped significant benefits from their partnerships with hunters (Mbaiwa2002, 2004; Kgathi et al. 2004; Thakadu et al. 2005; Novelli et al. 2006; Rihoy& Maguranyanga 2010). Consistent with hunters’ claims, for many remote com-munities in the Okavango, CBNRM projects have obtained their greatestmaterial benefits from safari hunting over photographic tourism (Mbaiwa2003; Thakadu et al. 2005: 30). Benefits include employment for significantnumbers of remote area villagers, many of whom have held no previous paidemployment (Kgathi et al. 2004: 19; Thakadu et al. 2005: 28). Indeed, Max andDhabe, the driver and tracker on the Johnson safari, were from the remote Oka-vango village of Khwai. Both had minimal formal education and had never beenemployed prior to working with Tony. Both Max and Dhabe articulated astrong preference for working in the bush, and a significant positive outcomeof the hunting industry has been the reduction in urban migration through pro-viding a sustainable means for people to continue to live in their homelands. Inaddition to employment, monies from hunting have been invested in educationscholarships, payment of household dividends, sanitation facilities for house-holds, the purchase of land cruisers, provision of funds for funeral expenses,building community halls and the purchase of recreational goods (Thakaduet al. 2005: 31–2). Another significant benefit for communities is that gamemeat is given to community trusts for distribution providing a valued foodsource (Thakadu et al. 2005: 27).
Community development based around the hunting industry is, of course,not without its problems. The race, class and gender roles and relationshipswithin the industry require far more space than I have even to begin toengage with here, but, in short, conform to many of the traditional hierarchiesand inequities associated with white, male dominance. The jobs undertaken byremote community dwellers are primarily the lower paid positions, such as
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driving and tracking, despite the phenomenal skills and local knowledgerequired for the latter. Safari companies still take the bulk of profits, and thiswill continue until communities have the experience and capacity to moveaway from joint partnerships to full management. Safari companies have attimes been accused of dishonest dealings with communities and engaging inunethical practices, such as hunting more animals than they have on licence,while factions within communities have been responsible for gross misappro-priation of funds (Rihoy & Maguranyanga 2010). Communities are seen tohave insufficient autonomy in decision-making, having no say in determiningthe hunting quotas within their areas, for example, which are set by thecentral government (Mbaiwa 2005: 159). Moreover, through choosing to selltheir hunting quotas rather than utilising them, communities are developingdependence on the market economy to meet subsistence needs (althoughthey are able to purchase citizen hunting licences above and beyond commu-nity quotas, if they have the funds). This entails a significant cultural shiftfrom hunting animals to hunting tourist dollars with the concomitant shift inskills and values. Whether or not this is a positive development is a complexquestion with which communities continue to grapple.
Despite these significant issues, CBNRM has made a significant positiveimpact for some remote communities and the direct benefits from huntinghave been said to lead to positive attitudes to tourism and wildlife conservationamong these communities, who for the most part strongly support the contin-ued presence of trophy hunting (Thakadu et al. 2005: 32; Lindsey et al. 2007:462). Consequently, Thakadu et al. (2005: 36; see also Mbaiwa 2003) argue:
the contribution from CBNRM to rural livelihoods such as those of Sankuyo [anOkavango village near Khwai] indicates that the global campaign against safarihunting should not be applied indiscriminately without due consideration of particu-lar cases in different parts of the world.
Through these positive community outcomes derived from their industry,hunters hope to unsettle the pervasive stereotype of the industry being apurely destructive one.
Hunting and ConservationIn this final section, I turn to the role of safari hunting in environmental con-
servation. In the colonial period throughout southern Africa, massive destruc-tion of wildlife was facilitated by both black and white hunters in the pursuit
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of profit through the sale of ivory, skins, furs, horns, feathers and meat, and alsoto aid the development of agriculture and pastoralism (MacKenzie 1988). Whilecertainly part of the problem, trophy hunters, with their selectiveness in relationto trophy size, along with strict codes of ethics, caused considerably lessdestruction than was facilitated by those hunting for trade in wildlife products(Steinhart 2006: 93). Indeed, witnessing the drastic declines in animal numbers,trophy hunters became some of the first conservationists in Africa, as elsewhere(MacKenzie 1988: 19; Cartmill 1993: 31; Carruthers 1995: 18; Dizard 2003: 18). Thiswas the case in the Okavango, where on observing the impact of over-harvest-ing, white professional hunters worked closely with the BaTawana Chief andcommunity to ensure a breeding sanctuary for animals through the establish-ment of the Moremi Game Reserve (Bolaane 2005). The type of conservationadvocated by hunters is a consumptive one, where individuals of a species aretaken, while the species as a whole is protected. This is in contrast to contem-porary Western motivations for conservation, which have shifted from concernfor ecosystem perpetuation towards sentience-based moral arguments whereeach animal is seen as having a right to life (Emel & Wolsch 1998: 12; Lien2004: 185). The policy of sustainable utilisation places hunting in a position offundamental incongruity with Western conservation ideals where, accordingto Slater (1996: 117), ‘the wilderness’s most salient characteristic is its lack ofdirect utility’. Yet, as Franklin (1999: 123–4) argues, ‘far from opposing thehunters to the environmentalists, it makes far more sense to see them as anopposed form of environmentalism’.
There is growing frustration in developing countries with the imposition ofWestern conservation ideals (Novelli et al. 2006: 63–4). In Botswana, forexample, one frustrated citizen, Dichaba Molobe, argues in a Gaborone news-paper4 that ‘Western tree-hugger’ values are harmful to Botswana, particularlyin regard to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Speciesban on selling ivory. Far from being endangered, Botswana is carrying tens ofthousands more elephants than it has capacity for resulting in widespreadenvironmental damage (Spinage 1998).5 As a result, there is frustration thatthe government’s vast wealth in stockpiled ivory cannot be accessed. As Mots-wana sociologist, Mbaiwa (2003: 369) writes:
The issue of the elephant problem in Botswana demonstrates the fact that the processof globalisation and the sustainable use of natural resources fail to harmonise inter-national wildlife conservation legislation with national socio-economic policies andprogrammes of developing countries.
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Professional hunters share these frustrations with the imposition of Westernideals that they see as inappropriate to the on-the-ground realities of contem-porary Botswana.
Ron Thompson (2003: xvix), ex-game warden and retired national parksboard director, firmly places the blame for Africa’s wildlife problems on:
the misguided governments and seemingly do-gooder NGOs of North America, Britainand Europe who, for the past twenty-five years, have ever more heavily imposed theirwildlife ideologies – like neo-colonialists – on the newly independent countries ofAfrica.
Evident in his statement is a rejection of the overtones of moral goodnessinherent in conservation discourse, which have led to a denial of the exclusive,alienating and neocolonial tendencies of the movement (Carruthers 1995: 89).
With a consumptive practice such as hunting, sustainability is obviously con-tingent on good governance, tight controls and effective enforcement of legis-lation – all of which are evident in contemporary Botswana. The abundanceof animal populations in the Okavango lead professional hunters to believethat by shooting the modest government determined quotas, they are notrisking the health of the various species. The sustainability of contemporaryhunting is affirmed by ecologists, whose research has determined that ‘thevery small off-take quotas [i.e. animals hunted] for trophies, which commonlyinclude older animals, and the very selective nature of the hunts, means thatthese influences are small in the Namibian and Botswana contexts’ (Novelliet al. 2006: 75). Moreover, in the Okavango, taxidermists study trends introphy size and quality as part of the process of self-monitoring within theindustry to ensure sustainability (Peake 2006: 60). This is part of a broadermovement among hunting outfitters to take proactive action to aid conserva-tion, motivated not least by a desire to improve the public image of the industry.Luke, the owner of the company with whom the Johnsons hunted, has insti-gated a number of censuses in his concessions including a base-line count forlion numbers. His company is involved with problem animal control in ruralareas for The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP), which pre-dominantly involves relocating predators from farmlands back into wildlifeareas. Tony has worked extensively in problem animal control, in both paidand voluntary capacities, and has been involved in a number of other conserva-tion projects, such as darting lions for scientific research. The Johnsons are alsoheavily involved in conservation work in the USA. Michael is the voluntarypresident of a big horn sheep conservation foundation, which occupies vast
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amounts of his time. This organisation is funded through the hunting of a verysmall number of the species each year at phenomenally high costs. Michael says‘if you don’t take care of the land, you, in my mind, don’t deserve to hunt the restof it’. Moreover, his choice to hunt Botswana in lieu of other African countrieswas influenced by the nation’s tight controls and good management of theindustry. This was despite the fact that costs are significantly higher in Bots-wana than neighbouring Zimbabwe or South Africa.
Beyond individual contributions, high revenues allow hunting outfitters tolease vast concessions that remain in a relatively natural state, rather thanbeing turned over to pastoral activities that involve environmental transform-ation. Consumptive tourism not only protects environments in their naturalstate, but is also more economically productive per square kilometre of landuse than cattle farming in much of Botswana (Barnes 2001: 148). In his extensivestudy of Botswana’s wildlife sector, environmental economist Barnes (2001: 148)concludes that a ban on safari hunting would have a profoundly detrimentaleffect on conservation:
[T]he exclusion of consumptive use would result in a drop of 74% in the amount ofland required by the wildlife sector, and an 81% drop in the amount of land requiredfor community-based wildlife use. This means that a large proportion of thewildlife estate would have no wildlife use value in the event of a ban on consumptivewildlife use.
The ‘wildlife estate’ constitutes 39% of Botswana’s landmass, and thus safarihunting ensures vast areas of land remain in their natural state. Indeed,hunting more than doubles the amount of land in sub-Saharan Africa setaside for conservation purposes (Lindsey et al. 2007: 462). There is an assump-tion in this line of argument, however, that preserving land for wildlife conser-vation is an unquestionable good. Yet, cattle farming is the traditional mainstayof black Batswana livelihoods, and relationships between conservation-orientedtourism outfitters and the cattle industry are fraught and tensions over land useare ongoing (Spinage 1998; Mbaiwa et al. 2003; Kgathi et al. 2004). Consequently,pro-conservation arguments must be understood within the broader context ofthe sociocultural and economic needs of the majority population.
Even without the complexities inherent in the perennial pastoralism versusconservation conflict, an obvious counterargument would be to utilisehunting concessions for photographic tourism. Hunters and a number ofresearchers argue that this is simply not feasible in many areas. First, they
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argue that there is not a high enough volume of photographic tourism relativeto the economic input to maintain all national parks, let alone wildlife zonesbeyond these protected areas (Lindsey et al. 2007: 464). Second, to be profitablefor game-viewing tourism, an area must have either high-density wildlife popu-lations or be considered scenically beautiful (Novelli et al. 2006: 73). In thisregard, ecotourism and the national parks movement have failed in regard tobroader conservation goals in that only certain types of landscapes aredeemed worthy of protection, while others, such as deserts and scrublands,remain unprotected (Ramutsindela 2004: 39). Hunting, on the other hand, pro-tects natural areas that do not necessarily conform to conventional tourists’ aes-thetic desires and is profitable in many more ecosystems, so long as there isreasonable species diversity (Novelli et al. 2006: 73).
Furthermore, hunters argue that in many respects their practice has less det-rimental environmental impacts with higher gains than photographic tourism.Despite its consumptive nature, they suggest the practice has a lesser negativeenvironmental footprint, as much of the hunting is on foot and the singlehunting party in approximately half a million hectares requires little infrastruc-ture. By contrast, photographic safaris have higher tourist volumes in small,prime areas, where negative impacts result from the numerous aircrafts andvehicles transferring clients and materials, which lead to waste managementand pollution issues (Mbaiwa 2003: 462). Extensive road networks inevitablydevelop with not only safari vehicles, but also supply trucks destroying veg-etation and contaminating water ways with petrol and diesel (Mbaiwa 2003:460). As Tony says, ‘vehicles cause a lot of shit. You go to Moremi, toChobe, you look at those areas and they are just trashed’. Ironically, in the Oka-vango, it is the national park areas that show the greatest signs of negativehuman impact, while the hunting concessions and private photographic con-cessions remain relatively pristine. Hunters – and many photographic guidesfor that matter – tend not to be moved by arguments critiquing the elitist orien-tation of high-cost, low-impact policies, but see the environmental benefits as ofgreater value than broader participation.
In economic terms, one safari hunter generates considerably higher incomethan one photographic client (Lindsey et al. 2007: 464). DWNP receives licence,trophy and daily concession fees, along with importation of weapons taxes fromeach client amounting to millions of pula, the national currency, each year. Sig-nificantly, 75% of profits from hunting remain in the country, relative to a mere27% of photographic tourism profits, where foreign ownership and the practiceof booking through overseas agents see the bulk of profits remain offshore
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(Lindsey et al. 2007: 464–5). Hunting operations are more often local, and thesafari company hosting the Johnson safari was entirely owned and run by citi-zens of Botswana.
In pointing out these parallels, hunters by no means argue that hunting shouldreplace photographic tourism. Photographic tourism is a far larger industry con-tributing significantly more to the national economy overall, while the greatestprofits in prime locations are gained through photographic tourism (Barnes2001: 151). Rather, they see the two industries as complementary and, indeed,many Okavango concessions contain both a photographic and hunting camp.The former is located near the permanent waterways, where higher animal den-sities abound for wildlife viewing, while hunters operate in the more peripheralparts of the concessions. Therefore, rather than being in competition, each ofthe industries is seen as having its environmental and social niche.
To sum up, hunting helps further conservation aims through the high reven-ues that not only contribute much of DWNP’s income, but also ensure that vastareas remain as bushland, which are minimally impacted by hunters, rather thanbeing turned over to the cattle industry. Accusations of conservation as neoco-lonial and coming at the cost of many Batswana’s desires for increased cattlegrazing areas are disputed by hunters on environmental grounds, whileanimal rights activists’ concerns for individual lives of animals are dismissedas naı̈ve and not in the best interest of the ecosystem as a whole. The opposi-tional views on the environmental impacts of hunting demonstrate what socialscientists have long argued: landscapes and the environment are best under-stood as ideological and cultural constructs, with attitudes to hunting and theanimals hunted varying on the basis of the material needs, moral values and cul-tural ideals of the individuals and interest groups involved.
An Elephant in the RoomIn the bar of a tourist lodge one night in Maun, the conversation turned to
hunting. Local professional hunters defended their practice, while a few touristsand local photographic tourism guides offered critiques. The conversationmoved on, but one of the professional hunters left the bar some hours laterand was followed by a young, female tourist, who started shouting ‘serialkiller’ at him as he climbed into his car. Another older hunter commented onhis experiences when visiting family in the UK:
An awful lot of people immediately snub you socially if they find out you’re a hunter.You don’t experience it really here in Maun, because this is a safari town. But in other
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parts of the world, if people realise you’re a hunter, ‘Er! Go away you dreadful man’,and things like that.
Being subject to such criticisms frequently, hunters do not engage in their practicelightly. For hunters like Tony and the Johnsons their approach is highly ethicaland considered, and they do what they do because they strongly believe thathumans’ rightful place is as active agents within nature. Citing the prevalenceof hunting since earliest human history, they view the anti-hunting sentimentof recent years as an aberration stemming from a modern society that has losttouch with the laws of nature. They do not feel they are compromising theirmoral values while hunting, but rather conceptualise their practice within ecologi-cal frameworks that blur the boundaries between nature and culture and normal-ise and naturalise their actions. While not all hunters are as thoughtful in theirapproach, Tony and the Johnsons’ perspectives are interesting preciselybecause they do not conform to the pervasive stereotype of the hyper-masculine,blood-thirsty and ignorant trophy hunter. In this paper, through a sympatheticexploration of their justifications for why they do what they do, I hope to haveunsettled some of the simplistic stereotypes of safari hunters. After all, as Luhr-mann (1989: 13) argues, the ‘point of the discipline is to describe observablehuman action, choosing its subjects carefully to challenge the comfortableassumptions Western intellectuals often hold about human thought’.
This, of course, does not change the fact that safari hunting is morally, ethi-cally, politically and aesthetically disconcerting for its critics and even, tovarying extents, its most avid supporters and practitioners. Hunting has rathermore in common with conventional forms of ecotourism than hunters maydesire, in that they have both fallen rather badly short of their promise (West& Carrier 2004; Walsh 2005). Like ecotourism broadly, safari hunting prioritisesthe desires of international clients above the needs of local people, while perpe-tuating many historic inequities surrounding convergences of race, class andgender. Hunting shares ecotourism’s ‘tendency to lead not to the preservationof valued ecosystems, but to the creation of landscapes that conform to importantWestern idealizations of nature through a market-oriented nature politics’ (West& Carrier 2004: 485). Within this broader reality, hunters’ belief in the rightfulplace of humanity within nature must be tempered with the realities of privilege,inequity and exclusion within the global market system.
Despite these issues, much of the research supports hunters’ arguments thattheir practice facilitates deep connections to nature for practitioners, whilemaking positive contributions to both remote community development and
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environmental conservation. These positive outcomes lay bare the fact that the‘take only photos – leave only footprints’ mantra is but one interpretation of anecotourism ethic, while consumptive practices may be appropriate in contextswhere local people – particularly those such as the San, who have been subjectto a long history of economic and social disadvantage – benefit from andencourage their continuation. These debates around appropriate naturalresource management and the place of hunting in Botswana’s wildlife zonesare enmeshed within a longstanding, complex and often contentious set ofrelationships between the urban elite and remote area dwellers. Within this pol-itical environment, Botswana’s fervently anti-hunting president, Ian Khama, hasspearheaded changes to the legislation, and safari hunting is being phased out inthe Okavango with a ban of hunting imposed in 2009 within a 25 km radius ofgame reserves and national parks and the non-renewal of hunting concessionleases. The impact on remote communities, the environment and localeconomy remains to be seen.
AcknowledgmentsMy thanks go to the Okavango community members, and particularly the huntersdescribed, who generously enabled this research. The fieldwork was conducted aspart of my doctoral research at the University of Western Australia. Thanks to theanonymous reviewers, Nick Harney and Taz Phillips for insightful comments onearlier drafts.
Notes1. While ethics vary over time, are culturally determined and subject to individual
beliefs and values, there are a core set of ethics observable in African trophyhunting. It is considered unethical to shoot: females of most species; at a waterhole;from or within sight of a vehicle; an animal that is not past its prime; in a situationwhere the animal is likely to be wounded, and if an animal is wounded, it is uncon-scionable not to track it down and kill it. These ethics add to the challenge of findingand killing an appropriate quarry, which in turn aims to ensure sustainability.
2. Hunters would argue that ‘sport’ is a gross simplification of the multitude of motiv-ations behind the practice, which Dizard (2003: Chapter 4) explores in great detail.
3. And hunters do very much get blood on their hands. The kind of sanitisation ofdeath described in the Introduction is solely for the photos. After each kill,Michael always helped loading the carcasses and often ended up covered in blood.Through this contact, he feels he takes ownership of the responsibility for the life hehas taken.
4. Mmegi, 25 May 2007, p. B7.5. The area worst affected by elephant damage is the Chobe/Linyanti region where
Spinage (1998: 120) describes a desirable carrying capacity in the riparian forests tobe 8000, while estimated numbers of elephants in the late 1980s were around60,000 with a 5% annual increase.
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