By Ken Wells

     Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

     7 January 1997

     Copyright 1997, Dow Jones & Co.

      MARONDERA, Zimbabwe -- Norman Travers has a problem. One of his farm animals is missing: a 3 1/2-ton black rhinoceros.

      "How can you lose a rhinoceros?" an irritated Mr. Travers asks a sheepish herder. "Have you sent some of the others after him?"

     Yes, explains the herder, who has stayed behind to watch over five other rhinos in a nearby corral.

     Several hand-wringing minutes later, the rhino plods docilely into view, accepting a playful pat from Mr. Travers. "Can't afford to lose one of these fellows," he says. Later, the rhinos take treats from Mr. Travers's hands and drink milk -- actually a souped-up protein compound -- from rhino-sized bottles.

     Mr. Travers has his reason for all this pampering. Not only is the black rhino an endangered species, but his small herd, including a nine-month-old calf, underpins efforts to attract paying tourists to his 11,500-acre game farm here. One day, Mr. Travers says, when the world conservation movement comes to its senses, he hopes to harvest and sell rhino horn, valued as an aphrodisiac in certain Asian countries. Harvesting, he says, can be done much like pruning a tree, with no harm or pain to the animal, which will eventually grow another horn.

     "I love these animals," he says. "But I am a farmer."

     In fact, Mr. Travers is a pioneer practitioner of an accelerating trend throughout much of southern Africa: the privatization and commercialization of game. Moreover, he finds himself at the vanguard of an increasingly vocal African conservation movement driven by free-market thinking whose motto about wildlife is, "Use it or lose it."

     How widespread this philosophy has become is reflected in recent formal efforts by the governments of a number of southern African countries -- Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia among them -- to seek repeal of a 1989 international ban on the trade of elephant ivory and hide. Their argument, which meets heated resistance from some Western environmental and animal-rights groups, is that they are all countries with surpluses of elephants. Their poor rural populations ought to be able to profit from the surplus beyond the splash of tourism dollars.

     If they can't, "the elephant becomes a nuisance, people grow to detest it and feel that they have no stake in its survival," says Peter Kunjeku, director of the Wildlife Society of Zimbabwe.

     Mr. Travers has similar sentiments about his rhinos. Currently, trade in rhino horn is banned by international treaty, to protect Africa's dwindling rhino populations from poachers. But Mr. Travers says poaching remains a serious problem. Controlled rhino ranching, on the other hand, could legally supply the world rhino-horn market while assuring the animals' survival in protective pockets. Ranchers could even provide a reliable supply of rhinos to help restock wild populations.

     The "use it or lose it" movement isn't an argument "against the traditional elephant in the traditional national park," says Kay Muir, a University of Zimbabwe economist who specializes in game issues. Rather, it is a recognition that as rising human populations make new public parks impossible and put pressures on existing ones, animals and their protectors will increasingly have to assume the "true costs of paying their way," she says.

     This includes programs, like one currently operating in Zimbabwe, that confer through a permit system limited ownership rights for elephants and other game to indigenous populations living near game parks. It also must include a recognition by Western conservationists of the right of Africans, including commercial farmers, to utilize game in ways that may sometimes offend conservationists' sensibilities, Ms. Muir adds.

     Mr. Travers is happy to tick off a few uses, beyond his designs on rhino ranching. He has already brought in a British animal behaviorist who, in experiments last year, taught some elephants to pull a plow and carry rangers on their backs. The behaviorist also trained one of his zebras to walk on a lead, a prelude to using it as a horse. Mr. Travers and other game farmers say it is entirely possible to domesticate certain African antelope, the eland for example, and raise them in mass numbers like cattle for the slaughterhouse.

     Though Mr. Travers does most of his business with tourists who pay to take day-long photo safaris on his farm, he occasionally sells permits to hunters to take specific animals. Not long ago, an aging bull sable antelope, prized by trophy hunters for its horns, fetched $2,000 from a client who spent the day tracking and shooting it.           "That's quite a bit of money for an animal that's past its usefulness," Mr. Travers says. Big-game hunts on private farms for more exotic species such as buffalo or lion can cost as much as $40,000, says Tony Tomkinson, a South African safari operator.

     If traditional conservationists look upon privatization with some suspicion, its broadening impact on game habitats is undeniable. In Zimbabwe, the percentage of the nation's land dedicated to game conservation has grown to more than 17% from 12% during the past decade alone, almost all of the growth coming from private game farms. South Africa, which had three large private game reserves 10 years ago, has about 25 large ones today, and hundreds of smaller, low-key game-ranching enterprises, many of them converted cattle farms. Namibia, Mozambique and Zambia, among others, are undergoing similar free-market transformations.

     The trend is so strong that regular game auctions of buffalo, giraffe, impala, wildebeest and numerous other nonendangered species are held throughout southern Africa. Buyers typically are cattle farmers wishing to convert operations to game farms. Sellers are people such as Mr. Travers who have marketable surpluses of wild animals. Mr. Travers sold 80 head of game, including wildebeest and buffalo, at auction late last year; a disease-free buffalo can fetch as much as $5,000 on the South African game market, he says.

      Mr. Travers notes another benefit to his game-ranching business: jobs for locals. He still retains some cattle-raising operations, which require six workers to handle about 600 head. His game-ranching and photo-safari operations, on the other hand, employ about 40 people.

     Benefits aside, the move toward privatization, coupled with the "use it or lose it" philosophy, flies square in the face of many Western notions of conservation. Antihunting and animal-rights groups object on moral grounds, and some conservationists worry that "consumptive use," if carried to extremes, is ultimately harmful because it reduces the value of all animals to mere economics.

     Though reasonable economic use ought to be considered in conservation programs, "I don't like the idea of turning everything into a cow," says Josh Ginsberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York group that sponsors more than 100 African conservation and research programs.

      For Teresa Telecky, a top zoologist with the Humane Society of the U.S., in Washington, D.C., the whole notion is anathema: "It's insane to try to assign an economic value to every animal on Earth."

     Such views matter, and grate, here, since conservation-minded Western tourists still fuel Africa's vital ecotourism and photo-safari industries, and Western conservation lobbyists still have a large influence over conservation matters in Africa. Nothing illustrates that more than lingering squabbles over Zimbabwe's "Campfire" program, and the looming fight over efforts by Zimbabwe and some of its southern African neighbors to repeal the ban on ivory sales.

     Campfire -- an acronym for Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources -- began in 1989 as a way of reducing complaints about marauding animals in villages next to national game parks. It also allowed indigenous residents to benefit from game roaming their traditional lands. Basically, it assesses game populations and awards permits -- of an elephant, or two, for example -- to local communities. Villagers can harvest the animals themselves and, say, use them for food. Or, as in many cases involving elephant permits, they can sell the permits to safari operators who guide big-game hunters into the area.

      Many here say Campfire, though it has had its problems, is largely a success in cutting the rural poor in on game wealth. One example: Villages in the Nyaminyami district in northwestern Zimbabwe earned about $467,000 over a recent three-year period by selling hunting permits, conducting photo-safari guide operations or harvesting animals for meat production.

     An added benefit: Poaching in most Campfire areas has dropped sharply, says Tawona Tavengwa, Campfire's spokesman, because "local people now have an interest in preserving their wildlife."

     Mr. Ginsberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society worked in Campfire villages for a number of years and also believes the program is beneficial. In many cases, it has prompted local villages that had turned some of their own lands into economically doubtful cattle farms to convert them back into game lands. "If you are taking lands that are marginally productive and putting them to a productive use, and game benefits, that's a plus," he says.

      Yet Campfire has come in for a withering attack by the Humane Society and some other conservation groups that contend that it has become a stooge of safari operators and pro-hunting groups. "There are a lot of ways to help local people on the ground in Africa without killing animals," says Ms. Telecky of the Humane Society, which has lobbied the U.S. government to stop its funding of the program.

      The fight over lifting the ivory ban is becoming just as contentious. Countries like Kenya were rapidly losing their elephant population to poachers in the early 1970s. The Western conservation community, rallying to the aid of those countries, helped convince more than 120 nations to sign off on the so-called Cites Treaty -- the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species. The Cites governing body enacted the 1989 ivory ban; it will meet later this year to consider petitions to allow at least some ivory trade. Early indications are that it is dubious of such an action.

     "It's not as if we're against preserving the elephant or that we're ungrateful for the help of the West," says Jon Hutton, director of Africa Resources Trust, a Zimbabwe group that lobbies for "use it or lose it" conservation issues, including the ivory trade-ban repeal. Mr. Hutton says, however, that Western conservationists need to take into account countries like Zimbabwe "that have a good track record of looking after their elephants."

     By official government estimates, the country has more than 64,000 elephants roaming its national parks; it believes the carrying capacity of those parks is closer to 35,000 animals. Harvesting the surplus for ivory and meat would be a huge economic boon to rural areas.

     "We should be able to use our elephants," says Emanuel Koro, director of Greenline, a Harare group that wants the ivory-trade-ban lifted. In his view, Western groups like the Humane Society that oppose the lifting are merely practicing "eco-colonialism."

     Ms. Muir, the University of Zimbabwe game economist, agrees. Westerners, viewing the elephant from a distance, have no idea of the "lost opportunity costs" of villagers who are often asked to forgo development of their lands, or suffer actual losses of crops, houses and lives, to elephants and their preservation, she says.

     "Would citizens of industrialized countries choose the survival of the whale, panda or bear . . . at the expense of their lives, the education of their children or their pensions?" she asks. "I doubt it. Yet they ask Africans to give up very substantial needs in order to ensure that wildlife prospers."

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