Abstract:
Legislative changes during the 1960s–1970s
granted user rights over wildlife to landowners in southern
Africa, resulting in a shift from livestock farming to wildlifebased
land uses. Few comprehensive assessments of such
land uses on private land in southern Africa have been
conducted and the associated benefits are not always
acknowledged by politicians. Nonetheless, wildlife-based
land uses are growing in prevalence on private land. In
Namibia wildlife-based land use occurs over c. 287,000 km2.
Employment is positively related to income from ecotourism
and negatively related to income from livestock. While
87% of meat from livestock is exported $95% of venison
from wildlife-based land uses remains within the country,
contributing to food security. Wildlife populations are
increasing with expansion of wildlife-based land uses, and
private farms contain 21–33 times more wildlife than in
protected areas. Because of the popularity of wildlife-based
land uses among younger farmers, increasing tourist arrivals
and projected impacts of climate change on livestock
production, the economic output of wildlife-based land
uses will probably soon exceed that of livestock. However, existing policies favour livestock production and are
prejudiced against wildlife-based land uses by prohibiting
reintroductions of buffalo Syncerus caffer, a key species for
tourism and safari hunting, and through subsidies that
artificially inflate the profitability of livestock production.
Returns from wildlife-based land uses are also limited by the
failure to reintroduce other charismatic species, failure to develop fully-integrated conservancies and to integrate
black farmers sufficiently.
