Animals commonly destroy growing crops and foods stores and loss of human life is all too common. The solution is inevitable. The wildlife has to go. Made wildlands uncompetitive Encouraged cattle and crops Brought marginal lands under the plough Made protected areas untenable Ensured conflict around protected areas Been unenforceable Looking for solutions Southern Africa has been leading in the last decade new approaches which can reconcile the conservation of wildlife and the development of rural areas surrounding protected areas which are vital as ecological corridors. While recognising historical realities and failings, southern Africans take no pleasure in doom and gloom scenarios, preferring to look for solutions rather than dwell on problems.
Progress depends on changing the dominant paradigm and moving away from protectionism.
The solution revolves around the need, not to take away value from wildlife but to increase it. If the right mechanisms are in place we can return the management of wildlife to private landholders and rural communities so that they can reap direct benefits from this resource. In this way wildlife becomes a tool for development and we create incentives that dramatically increase the likelihood that rural people will practise conservation by ensuring that offtakes are sustainable and also that they will at least tolerate the protected areas around them. Finally, through this same mechanism we can make it possible for wildlife used sustainably to out-compete both cattle and crops, leading to the maintenance of natural vegetation and stopping , even reversing the destruction of land, to the benefit of all. These are villagers who are often terrorised by wild animals and who therefore directly pay the costs of Africa s national parks.