Conservation Laws in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to a vast number of species of animals and plants. Many of
these species, especially animals, are targeted to poachers for their high value on the dark markets. To help preserve the species that are left in Sub-Saharan Africa, conservation laws have been put into place to help put a stop to the poachers and protecting the habitat. In this paper I will be going over the different laws that have been put in place, policies in Zimbabwe, how trophy hunting effects Zimbabwe, wildlife laws in Sub-Saharan Africa, conservation biology in Sub-Saharan Africa, ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa, biodiversity in Sub-Saharan Africa, and how tourism funds in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Countries specific to the Sub-Saharan region of Africa, which can include Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, have all joined together under a research project called the Conservation Act Trust (CAT). This research project, according to the conservation action website, states that CAT required a summary of all wildlife legislation dealing with poaching, trade and trafficking in the following countries. This research project was done by Gareth Mauck, throughout the entire overview Mauck goes into great detail of every country’s plan with the CAT and the offenses that go along with each the layout of each country. One point that is made in the beginning of the overview of this document, is that all of these countries are actually apart of what’s known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and that they have agreed with that groups requirements as well. The CITES is mostly known for protecting
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endangered plants and animals to help ensure that they are not threatened by international trade. One thing that is also brought up in this section is that there is a gray area between hunting and poaching in a number of the countries. In Angola for example, it is stated that the authorities must deem the kill legal in order for the hunter to keep the skin, meat and trophy. If the kill is deemed illegal, then it will be confiscated, and the hunter can appeal it to the Governor in thirty days. However no one or company is permitted to commercialize ivory, skins, rhino horn, meat or any other hunting related products without any authorization. Certain countries are still struggling with poachers coming into their country, causing an impact on the number of tourists coming in.
In Zimbabwe, the wildlife policy shows how wide the aspect of their environmental policies are. Some of their main policy discussions consist of how the poaching of rhinos and elephants feed into the international need for ivory and rhino horns, preserving the land from usage, and how issues pertaining wildlife are presented throughout the local, national and international levels. These policies where put into place to help protect not only the wildlife, but also the habitat that they live in. The book goes over the difference between preservation and conservation, how preservation is more about habitat protection from any type of use, while conservation allows for usage under a type of management. Zimbabwe has a potential solution towards the rural developments, trophy hunting. Trophy hunting in Zimbabwe can help bring money into the country due to the increase of legal tools and the administrative and governance that goes long with it. The significance of trophy hunting has risen as well due to this, according to a journal posted on the Hindawi website, trophy hunting has been shown to create more incentives for conservation of these threatened and endangered species and their habitats. One of the key species in Zimbabwe is the African elephant, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service
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put out a temporary ban on the trophy products of African elephants in 2014. With the trophy hunting increasing in Zimbabwe, the policies surrounding them. Most of the policies are things such as the hunters are not allowed to hunt female animals with young dependents, hunters are not allowed to use things such as salt or mineral licks and motorized vehicles to help them in pursuit, and if the targeted animal is still able to escape then it is free to do so. With these policies, there are some ethical codes that go along with them such as, no shooting an animal from a vehicle, aircraft or boat, to avoid hunting animals at night and captive bred animals, avoid the usage of any spotting agents to locate animals, avoid any inhumane ways of hunting animals and leaving any type of bait once done with your hunt, avoid using electronic calling devices to lure in animals, avoid littering, do not falsify trophy measurements, avoid any mishandling and misbehaving with firearms, and finally follow up on any wounded animals. Zimbabwe has begun to take on the trophy hunters to try and help it benefit their country more then harm them. Other countries are going through the same type of wildlife law enforcements.
Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are beginning to enforce more wildlife laws to help decrease the numbers of poaching of the high value animals and their habitats across Africa. According to the review by David W. Henson and others, there are three main areas of law enforcement that are being covered in this report and they include optimization with a focus on the capacity on patrol staff, maximizing management effectiveness and planning and implementation of law enforcement operations, and implementing integration of intelligence and investigations into the law enforcement operations (leading to more arrests and prosecutions of wildlife crimes). If the poachers do not succeed in their crimes, then they do not make any money. The goal of the rangers is to have the same mindset of poachers, which is to be willing to accept any risk even if it is death to complete their job. A majority of these cases do fail in
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successful prosecutions unfortunately, due to the lack of witnesses. These cases rely heavily on physical evidence, and there are more critical procedures to go through to ensure that the evidence can be properly used in the prosecutions. These procedures go through a team of skilled managers and specially located in proper equipment and facilities to ensure they will not be tampered with. When it comes to monitoring any offenders or cases, some factors that have led to their success are that they will track the case progress to help keep cases that involve wildlife crimes a priority for the other law enforcements and judiciaries, they will monitor wildlife crime cases on a national basis to make it easier on them to track the progress to improve their success rates, and finally they maintain records of any wildlife crimes to help them identify any repeat offenders that are eligible to higher, more serious penalties. With any crime, the judges view repeated offenders more seriously than they did when they first committed the crime, which increases any penalty that is applied to them. In this same study however, it has been shown that repeated offenders have not been easily detected, which honestly does not shock me. In my opinion, if they have been caught and tried a first time, then that is when their penalties should be a great amount, and when they should be taken seriously since statistically repeated offenders aren’t as likely to be caught again.
There are many challenges across Sub-Saharan Africa, but one of the biggest ones is conservation biology. In the book titled “Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa”, authors John Wilson and Richard Primack describe these challenges as a “crises discipline”. The first few chapters set the scene for what conservation biology is in Sub-Saharan Africa and how humans play such a huge role in the field, whether it is in scientific, ethics, or beliefs to have the entire system function. The next few chapters cover how important the connection between people and nature truly is, it expands on ecosystems and how humans play a role in nature. Once
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the introduction section is done, then the authors dive into the second section of this book which is where there are open scenarios of the threats of today’s issues and how biodiversity plays a role in it. This section is about being open minded and developing an understanding of possible solutions that can help address these issues. In the last portion of this book, it truly focuses on some over the top solutions the today’s issues. There are talks about extinction, species at risk, how we can classify them, and there is talk about conservation of species and their ecosystems. This book really gets into broad challenges that are unknown to many people and may still be unknown for many years. With this book and the guidance of the authors who wrote it, we are able to have a better understanding of the basics of conservation biology and the ongoing challenges that we face today, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa has been steadily declining. Most of that agriculture is crop based, the tree population however is experiencing a positive effect. Trees are introduced onto farms for multiple reasons, mostly for the purpose of retaining the land after it has been used. There haven’t been many studies on the cultural side of ecosystem services. Due to this, the lack of data for certain trees in ecosystem services makes it harder to establish which trees are associated with each landscape since they do use local and exotic tree species. In Sub- Saharan Africa, the vegetation is mostly made up of woodlands, forest transitions or mosaics, Kalahari wooded grasslands, sahel bushlands, and cape and karoo shrublands. The same threats that threaten the rest of the world’s biodiversity also threaten Africa’s. Biodiversity can be helped by some important management skills being implemented some of them consist of the capture of animals and relocating them, managing the crop raiding animals, having veterinary staff diagnose and manage diseases, and managing sport hunting and associated industries like
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taxidermy. In this book, it is recommended to determine whether the biodiversity for each habitat with high areas of density in each country has the adequate conservation status.
The way Sub-Saharan Africa is able to fund its conservation needs by wildlife tourists. In many African countries, tourism is one of the heaviest contributors to financing conservation. Certain commercial tourist companies help create local jobs which helps create a type of excitement for conservation in the areas, they also promote for private reserves, public protected areas, anti-poaching and breeding. Groups like this focus on more flashy animals such as big cats, elephants and other animals. These groups also use the conservation projects to persuade tourists to purchase these types of trips through them instead of bigger travel agents. Doing this, the money spent on the trip helps contribute towards the conservation projects. If tourist book through bigger travel agent companies, then the conservation tourist enterprises go seeking them and ask for donations after the tourists have just spent all that money traveling to Africa.
During this paper I talked about different ways countries practice conservation laws and the penalties in place with them, how Zimbabwe is dealing with trophy hunting and their policies in place with trophy hunting and conservation, wildlife laws in Sub-Saharan Africa, conservation biology in Sub-Saharan Africa, biodiversity and different agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, and finally how countries in Sub-Saharan Africa finance their conservation policies. Throughout this paper I was able to put down my existing knowledge and learn more about a subject that I thought I knew pretty well. Sub-Saharan Africa has a vast number of plants and animals that people have come to love.
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References:
Buckley, Ralf, and Alexa Mossaz. “Private Conservation Funding from Wildlife Tourism Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa: Conservation Marketing Beliefs and Practices.” Biological Conservation, Elsevier, 20 Dec. 2017, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000632071731306X.
Duffy, R. “Welcome to CAB Direct.” CAB Direct, 2000, www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20003032556.
Kuyah, Shem, and Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of its special effort on global food security. Edmundo Barrios was funded by Consultative Group for . “Trees in Agricultural Landscapes Enhance Provision of Ecosystem Services in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Taylor & Francis, 2016, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21513732.2016.1214178.
Mauck, Gareth. Wildlife Legislation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Criminal Offences. 2013, conservationaction.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Wildlife-Legislation-in-SS-Africa- Nov-2013smallpdf.com_.pdf.
Muposhi, Victor K., et al. “Trophy Hunting, Conservation, and Rural Development in Zimbabwe: Issues, Options, and Implications.” International Journal of Biodiversity, Hindawi, 28 Dec. 2016, www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2016/8763980/.
Primack, Richard B., and John W. Wilson. Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa. Open Book Publishers, 2019.
Stuart, Simon N, et al. “Biodiversity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Its Islands.” Google Books, Google, 1990, books.google.com/books?hl=en.
David W. Henson, Robert C. Malpas and Floris A.C. D’Udine (2016). Wildlife Law Enforcement in Sub-Saharan African Protected Areas – A Review of Best Practices. Occasional Paper of the IUCN Species Survival Commission No. 58. Cambridge, UK and Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. xxii+65pp.
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