This post by contributor Wallace Kaufman is a reply to Sterling Burnett’s post, “Where Are the Eco-tourists’ Dollars?” For openers, let me suppose that I am a lion, a giraffe, or a Cape buffalo. I ask myself, “Who is going to save me from a poacher?” And “Who will put up the most money to…
Search Results for: wildlife
Hunting Restores Wildlife in Mozambique
A new video by PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center) describes how trophy hunting in Coutada 11, an area in Mozambique that extends almost 500,000 acres, has brought back its wildlife. Devastated by a civil war that ended in 1992, Mozambique lost most of its wildlife, especially large animals such as lions and elephants. As part of the recovery from the war, the Mozambique government began leasing its game reserves to private businesses.
In 1994 Mark Haldane, who runs an African safari business in South Africa and Botswana visited Coutada 11, which is in the Zambesi River delta. “It was absolutely beautiful,” he says in the video. “The problem was they had hardly any animals.”
Using funds from his existing business, Haldane began building up wildlife again. The key was to involve the local community. The company built a clinic and a school and regularly provides meat from hunting. It also hired former poachers as salaried anti-poachers.
The biggest threat to protecting the animals, says Haldane, is proposed laws that would ban the importation of trophy animals such as elephants and lions into the U.S. and other countries.
The Endangered Species Act at 50: Hope and Change?
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was signed into law 50 years ago by President Richard Nixon. It continues to be a powerful force in environmental protection—but for good or ill? PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, has published a special issue of its quarterly publication, PERC Reports, titled “Fifty Years of the Endangered Species…
Biden Revokes Alaska Leases, Plans More Bans in National Petroleum Reserve
The Institute for Energy Research explains how detrimental the president’s recent actions are. “President Biden’s Interior Department has revoked seven remaining oil and natural gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were sold during the Trump administration and unveiled a proposal to ban new leasing and development on 10.6 million acres of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska….
Are Conservation Leases the Key to Resolving Competing Demands on Public Lands?
This guest post by Shawn Regan is a substantive analysis of the recent proposal by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to allow leasing of public land for conservation purposes. Regan is vice president of research at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Mont.
Most conservation issues involve balancing competing uses of natural resources. Should a parcel of land be developed for energy production, harvested for timber, grazed by livestock, managed as wildlife habitat, or set aside as open space? In a world of scarce resources, the main question is: How do people best resolve these competing demands?
People Take Up Too Much Biomass
A very odd story has appeared in Science Magazine. Elizabeth Pennisi writes that humans are overrunning the earth. The evidence is that they weigh a whole lot more than wild animals. A new estimate of biomass “concludes that wild land mammals alive now have a total biomass of 22 million tons, and marine mammals account…