Free Our Markets

by Howard Baetjer Jr

  Let us first consider how private ownership improves stewardship, beginning with wildlife in Africa.

  Private Ownership Leads to Good Stewardship

  As we saw in the last chapter’s examples of Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary and the Tongass National Forest, the institution of ownership matters greatly to the incentives for stewardship, because ownership rights give owners a stake in what they own. The changing fortunes of wildlife in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Namibia illustrate the point well.

  Elephant Management in Kenya and Zimbabwe

  The great threat to elephants in Africa is poachers, who kill elephants to which they have no right, cut off their tusks with a chain saw (or an axe), leave the area quickly, and then sell the ivory on the black market. Poachers indiscriminately kill young bulls as well as old. Some poachers are professionals, but some are local people whom foreign middlemen pay, often at prices far below market levels, for the stolen ivory. By 1979, poaching had endangered elephants in much of Africa.

  At the other extreme is the threat posed by overpopulation. In the absence of poaching or legal hunting, elephant populations can grow at seven percent per year, a rate at which herd sizes can double in ten years. When elephants are well protected, culling of the herds is usually necessary to prevent the herds from growing too large and destroying woodlands and savannas. Elephants will push over trees just to test their strength or to get at a few high hanging seedpods, so excessive populations can turn woodlands into grasslands, with devastating consequences for browsers such as giraffes and endangered black rhinos.

  In both Kenya and Zimbabwe, the elephants were (and still are) formally unowned, or owned by all the citizens, so the countries’ governments are ultimately in control of them. The governments of the two nations took very different approaches to management rights and use rights to elephants, however. Below I describe the different approaches, and I ask you, reader, to estimate the changes in the numbers of elephants in each country over the decade from 1979 to 1989, before African elephants were listed as an endangered species and a world-wide ban on trade in ivory was enacted.

  In Kenya the elephant population in 1979 was approximately 65,000. Most Kenyan elephants lived, then as now, on game preserves, watched over by game guards. Unfortunately, the Kenyan game guards in the 1980s were relatively few in number, poorly paid, and ill-equipped.

  Significantly, Kenya permitted no hunting of elephants. Even before the worldwide trade ban went into effect in 1990, Kenya also had outlawed all trade in elephant products. (The hides, which are made into boots, wallets, and other leather goods, are as valuable as the ivory.) Thus Kenyans had no use rights to elephants of any kind, other than the benefits they might enjoy from tourism. Most rural Kenyans gained little from tourism; those gains were enjoyed by better-off Kenyans in the tourist trade. Rural Kenyans bore the costs of crop damage and personal danger presented by the large and sometimes aggressive animals.

  In Zimbabwe the elephant population in 1979 was approximately 30,000, less than half than in Kenya. But Zimbabwe instituted more varied and extensive management and use rights. While Zimbabwe, like Kenya, has extensive national parks and game preserves, the Zimbabwean government also allowed and promoted hunting of elephants. In several large, state-owned areas, strictly controlled hunting was (and still is) allowed. Zimbabwe also allowed trade in elephant products until the trade ban took effect in 1990. In fact, the Zimbabwean government covered part of the expenses of its Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management by selling the ivory and hides of elephants that were culled to prevent overpopulation or killed because they posed a threat to humans. This source of market revenue helped Zimbabwe pay and equip its game guards better than was done in Kenya.

  Another significant difference between Zimbabwe and Kenya is that beginning in 1975, the Zimbabwean government increasingly allowed private landowners (mostly ranchers, almost exclusively white) to manage the wildlife on their property. These use rights meant that landowners could hunt, for commercial purposes, the non-protected game on their lands or sell the hunting rights to safari outfitters. Then, in 1988, the Zimbabwean government began to extend these sorts of use rights to villagers who lived on state-owned communal land.

  Based on this information, what do you suppose happened to the populations of elephants in the two countries in the ten-year period between 1979 and 1989? 1989 is significant because in that year the African elephant was placed on the list of endangered species by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, to which the governments of Kenya, Zimbabwe, the United States, and some 170 other nations are signatories. That listing effectively meant that trade in elephant hides and ivory was banned worldwide. (The provisions of the treaty are so strict that it is illegal to import an antique piano into the United States, if the keys are ivory.) Again, in 1979 there were approximately 65,000 wild elephants in Kenya and 30,000 in Zimbabwe. What do you suppose the numbers were on the eve of the trade ban?

  * * * * *

  By 1989, the population of elephants in Kenya had dropped from 65,000 to approximately 19,000, while in Zimbabwe the numbers had increased from 30,000 to 43,000.

  The first point to jump out of these figures is that government ownership and “protection” are no guarantee of good stewardship. That approach failed badly in Kenya, where the government officials were corrupt and poaching was rampant. Indeed, evidence indicates that Ngina Kenyatta, wife of the Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, was a major smuggler of poached ivory. Also involved in poaching and smuggling was John K. Mutinda, Kenya’s top wildlife civil servant (see the notes for Chapter 4). Consistant with the Incentive Principle from the last chapter, Kenyan government ownership of the elephants tempted those in charge to use their authority to benefit themselves at the expense of other Kenyans and all who wish for the flourishing of the species.

  On the other hand, we cannot conclude that government ownership and “protection” are sure to fail, because the public officials in Zimbabwe protected well the elephants in their national parks and game preserves. It’s noteworthy, however, that in Zimbabwe the elephants were a source of revenue for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management—the department had an ownership interest in the elephants they protected—so those in the department had a much stronger incentive to do a good job in protecting elephants from poachers than did the Kenyan game guards. (In addition, the elephant hunters represented boots on the ground and, therefore, a deterrent to would-be poachers.)

  A lesson to learn is that leaving stewardship of natural resources to government is risky. It’s not dependable; it relies too much on good bureaucratic management culture to overcome weak institutional incentives for stewardship.

  The 1975 decision by the central government in Zimbabwe to give private landowners authority to manage the game on their lands, including commercial hunting, gave landowners an incentive to preserve the wildlife there. Up to that point, ranchers had had no ownership rights to the wildlife on their lands, so they used the land largely for raising cattle, which they could own and sell. Cattle ranching was not only permitted, but also actively subsidized by the Zimbabwean government with state-provided veterinary and marketing services. Wildlife competed with and sometimes killed cattle, so the ranchers had incentives to eliminate the wild animals which they didn’t own. Because they were not allowed to hunt game commercially, they often gave hunting opportunities to their friends. According to Brian Child, one of the wildlife officials who helped implement the CAMPFIRE program discussed below, “without value to landholders, wildlife disappeared.”

  The improved management culture in Zimbabwe after 1975 produced a healthier environment for elephants, and other wildlife, to thrive alongside the human population. Between 1975 and 1989, even a weak dose of private ownership in the form of management and use rights, coupled with freedom of exchange of elephant products, produced incentives for people to care for what they “owned” for their own sakes, not jus
t because it was their job. After 1975, when the subsidies for raising cattle began to be removed and the ranchers were allowed to profit from the game on their lands, incentives shifted dramatically. With use rights, if not full ownership, came stewardship. By the late 1980s hunters paid on average $25,000 for a hunt in which an elephant was the main trophy. With such money in prospect, according to Child, ranchers began to look after the game on their lands, and “[this] caused a massive increase in wildlife numbers and species, as landholders developed hunting and tourism enterprises.” Some landowners added these enterprises to their cattle operations, but some got rid of their cattle entirely and let their land revert to habitat for wild animals. Once the ranchers could own them, the wild animals were often more profitable than cattle.

  Given the successes on land owned free and clear by ranchers and with the urging of a few individuals who understood the economics of ownership and stewardship, in 1988 the government extended to villagers use rights over the animals in their areas. Under the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) the state retained legal ownership of wildlife, but it devolved (or perhaps more accurately from a long historical perspective, it returned) the right to manage and benefit from wildlife to rural district councils (local governments), and through them to local communities. (Unfortunately the communities did not hold the use rights directly, but through the rural district councils—local governments. This layer of bureaucracy reduced somewhat the effectiveness of the program; for example, in certain areas the rural district councils did not pay out to the villagers all the money they were owed. Despite this limitation, CAMPFIRE did transfer rights to villagers in substantial degree.) Ultimately there were many CAMPFIRE areas on land totaling some twenty to thirty percent of Zimbabwe.

  The principles of CAMPFIRE gave the villagers partial but significant ownership rights over the animals on their lands: Of first importance is that CAMPFIRE provided the villagers with revenue from hunting and tourism on their lands and allowed them to decide how to use it. Payments from hunters and tourists were treated just like revenue from livestock or crops. Communities would decide democratically how to allocate the funds. Child reports that the first CAMPFIRE community “sat down for two days to debate how to use their money, and decided to invest in a grinding mill, provide funds to a school, and retain almost half as cash.”

  The right to take benefits directly in cash made a world of difference to villagers’ attitudes toward wild animals. Instead of viewing them merely as dangerous pests, villagers treated the animals as assets of direct value to themselves.

  Trophy hunting on their lands meant not just cash, but also food for the sometimes-hungry villagers. Child writes, “Many [villagers] were astounded that westerners would pay for horns twenty times what the meat was worth, and yet outfitters could still deliver the majority of the carcass to the community.”

  With these benefits of just partial ownership at stake, everyone in the community looked after the animals. Every villager became a game guard. According to wildlife economist Urs Kreuter, “In some areas villagers began to actively inform on illegal poaching in their areas (unheard of in the preceding colonial era).”

  Under CAMPFIRE, community members bargained directly with the safari companies that provided tourism or hunting. As the villagers bargained, much higher, true market prices for the wildlife emerged, rewarding the villages for their stewardship.

  CAMPFIRE avoided the knowledge problem of central planning. According to Child, CAMPFIRE let “communities, not outsiders, set quotas for the number of animals that could be taken each season.” (Again, this authority had to be exercised through the rural district councils, the local governments.) The authority gave the villagers the opportunity—and the incentive—to manage “their” wildlife for long-run, sustainable benefit to their communities. The results were uplifting. Child again: “With time, communities began to invest in their wildlife, employing game guards, managing fire, counting animals, and fencing crops or homesteads to reduce human-wildlife conflict.” And the elephants thrived: “Between 1990 and 2003, the population of elephants on communal lands doubled, even though human population doubled at the same time. Other wildlife increased fifty percent, and trophy size was maintained.”

  As in Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary, here we have a case of dual use—use of the land as habitation for both people and wildlife—thanks to the incentives of, in this case, quasi-private ownership.

  Unfortunately we can’t leave the story there; the fortunes of wildlife in Zimbabwe changed again. After the world-wide trade ban was imposed in 1990, Zimbabwe was no longer permitted to sell elephant products. Also, due to pressure from animal rights groups that opposed any killing of elephants, Zimbabwe ceased culling the elephant herds in its national parks. The result has been mixed, and potentially very sad: Elephant populations have increased too much. On parkland spanning the Zimbabwe-Botswana border, according to Kreuter, the herds that used to be maintained in sustainable numbers by Zimbabwe’s culling have grown to approximately 120,000 to 180,000 (the number is hotly debated by pro- and anti-hunting groups), “which is about two to three times the previously estimated carrying capacity for this region, and the impacts on the trees in some areas, such as the Chobe River, are devastating. It is expected that with the next severe drought many of these elephants will die from starvation.”

  Zimbabwean elephants, villagers, and ranchers alike have also suffered from tyranny. Although CAMPFIRE was successful and celebrated, and though it spread widely through Zimbabwe for over a decade, after the year 2000, Zimbabwe’s increasingly authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe, began to roll back land use reforms, seizing ranchers’ lands and recentralizing control over communal lands. CAMPFIRE continues to limp along, but it has been greatly weakened by Zimbabwe’s dreadful misgovernment.

  Stewardship still leaves much to be desired in Kenya as well. After the international ivory ban was imposed in 1990, under the influence of animal rights groups and with pressure from its mass tourism industry, Kenya has retained its anti-hunting policies. Further, with generous financial support from western nations, Kenya greatly reduced poaching. Sadly, the consequence, according to Kreuter, has been that the exploding elephant populations “have led to the eradication of most trees in some national parks such as Amboseli [one of Kenya’s most popular and magnificent parks] and, with that, the disappearance of browsers, such as black rhinos and giraffes, in these areas.”

  Namibia’s Stewardship through Local Ownership

  Those sad developments in Kenya and Zimbabwe, however, are not all there is to the unfolding story of wildlife conservation in Africa through ownership rights. According to economist and Africa specialist Karol Boudreaux, the successes that came from granting use rights to local residents were so striking that the approach is spreading, most notably to neighboring Namibia.

  Namibia has seen a resurgence of wildlife—along with a steady increase in local people’s standard of living—since the government gave black Namibians rights to the wildlife on communal lands, in an approach similar to Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE known as Community-Based Natural Resource Management. Boudreaux writes that the results of changes in ownership rights in Namibia were very similar to those in Zimbabwe:

  [Namibia’s experience] was a natural experiment of sorts—in 1974 the South African government [which at that time was the governing entity in South West Africa, the former name of Namibia] … gave white freehold farmers rights to fence in, manage, and use wildlife. Black Namibians had no such rights. Poaching was rampant throughout the country on non-freehold land until, in 1996, the [then independent] government extended similar rights to rural black Namibians. Now poaching on those lands is near zero and the kinds of increases in wildlife numbers [seen] in Zimbabwe … have happened in Namibia.

  In Namibia, the legislation enabling Community-Based Natural Resource Management allows local people to form “conservancies” of which they are the members. A significant
difference from CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe is that in Namibia the conservancies hold the rights directly rather than through local governments. Included are the rights to:

  hunt for animals for the use of conservancy members (“own-use”);

  capture and sell game;

  cull game;

  manage protected game;

  become a game preserve that permits trophy hunting with a quota; and to engage in non-consumptive use. (This primarily means tourist-related activities that use game; but the definition also encompasses other recreational, educational, cultural, or aesthetic uses.)

  The successes of Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Namibia have been substantial and continuing, with, as yet at least, no backsliding from the Namibian government. Boudreaux’s 2007 report on community-based natural resource management in Namibia captures the importance of private ownership rights to the flourishing of both wildlife and local people. Included in the report are these and other statements from conservancy members:

  “Wildlife numbers are now way up, and this makes us happy. Before, we had no say over the wildlife. Now we can say how much to harvest. This is something we’re proud of. And today, we can contract with any investor. Now, we have a contract with a professional hunter, and that never happened before. We are planning for many more things.”

  “Wildlife numbers are really increasing. I see increases in every species. When we started, there was no wildlife. The animals were owned by the Ministry, so people poached them. Everyone was poaching. What ownership means is you have to take care of it.”