Pemba

I’m attending a meeting for many of the varied and divergent stakeholders who work in Niassa Reserve. These meetings are never simple with a full range of interests, styles, countenances, attitudes and accents on display. The agenda was full: how to manage illegal artisanal mines within the boundary, how to handle zonation when the Reserve changes its designation, how to respond to hunting concessions who want to increase their quotas, and how to recognise the plight of certain species such as hyena.

One of the projects within the Reserve is a wonderfully dedicated endeavour to track carnivore populations, backed up by rigorous science. The data are showing that by aiming for the largest individual in a group, sport hunting may be decimating hyena clans. Female hyenas are larger than males and groups operate under a matriarch. If the lead female is targeted because the bloodthirsty operate on a ‘big is best’ mentality, group structure can break down so that the clan disbands, with likely death of the remaining members. As they must maintain as healthy an ecosystem as possible, hunting outfits do largely want to promote conservation overall, so hopefully the hyena message sunk in. I personally find the act of hunting distasteful in the extreme, but I recognise its value as a conservation financing tool. The Mozambican government has traditionally enabled it but may be making signs that non-hunting tourism is its preferred future direction. This is all fine and dandy and we are exploring it but tourism simply doesn’t have the financial impact of a trophy hunter who, in compensating for some inadequacy somewhere, wants the thrill of firing a bullet that kills a lion. Recently I was on a website for a hunting safari company in Zimbabwe which stated the trophy fee for killing a lion at USD 60,000 plus all manner of fees, levies and the standard fee of USD 1,000 per day for the privilege of being on the hunt.

With issues such as this on the table, the meeting needed to be effective. Many of the operators have sat through years of feeling that the overall Reserve authorities need to do more to serve the varied agendas. The chair’s style was essentially to filibuster, and in Trump-like fashion, to respond to any difficult question with a meandering diatribe that left participants too exhausted to ask again.

At lunchtime I was sat near a few of the professional hunters, one of whom mentioned he was heading to Juba soon. Another piped up about trips there to hunt bongo, a beautiful and secretive antelope that inhabits the forest zone in which I spent time working. There followed a discussion about the bounties on offer in South Sudan, which is also home to the planet’s second largest mammal migration (of white-eared kob), after the Serengeti. The hunter almost licked his lips in anticipation. South Sudan is NOT a country where sport hunting for conservation purposes can be justified as there are no systems for collecting hunting revenues or assessing quotas and therefore no benefit back into conservation activities. I was turned off from gnawing on my chips.

In more positive developments, my parents filled in my proxy European election vote for the Green Party. I remain loyal to the Labour Party for any general election as their last manifesto was very positive but I had to select a party with a clear position on Brexit if there is any hope of rectifying the mess. A clear view is simple with one MP, but Caroline Lucas, as the party’s best known voice, is a bloody good principled egg who deserves more recognition.