Elephants and Ivory; E. Larson

Zimbabwe is taking a stand against the "made in Switzerland" solution to dwindling elephant populations by promoting trade in ivory. Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa have joined Zimbabwe's elephant manage ment program, which has a 10-year record of suc cess. Banning ivory is the surest road to extinction for the African elephant, argue leaders in those countries. They believe the villagers can do more to protect the elephants and ensure the longevity of the species than costly centralized government programs can. If statistics are any indication, the communal management programs in those countries are suc ceeding-the numbers of elephants in those counElizabeth Larson, a staff writer at the Cato Institute, researched African elephants while studying at the National Journalism Center in the summer of 1990. She holds a degree in English literaturefrom Vassar College. tries have increased 40 percent in the last decade.

Much of the elephant debate centers on whether the species is really in danger of extinction. Ele phant herds in many sections of Africa have been shrinking drastically.The total number of African elephants has fallen from 1.3 million in 1979 to 750,000today-a fact no one on either side of the ivory issue denies. Yet African elephants don't live in a single gigantic herd. Hundreds of herds, each numbering several thousand elephants, are scat tered across the African continent. While popula tions of some herds declined during the 1980s,pop ulations of other herds doubled. "Zimbabwe does not consider the African ele phant an endangered species," Thomas Bvuma, an official at the Zimbabwean embassy,said in a July 1990interview. Individual herds are in trouble, but the species as a whole is not about to disappear, he said. It can hardly be a coincidence that political borders, not natural ones, delineate which areas are experiencing rapidly dwindling elephant pop ulations and which are not, Bvuma pointed out.

Simply totaling the population figures from all countries home to the African elephant can be misleading. In fact, elephant populations in Zim babwe and surrounding regions are not only grow ing in numbers, but are doing so at close to the maximum 7-percent-a-year reproduction rate for the species. What are the Zimbabweans doing to eliminate poaching and ensure the survival of their elephants? Agriculture in Zimbabwe has long been man aged by the individual farmer-now the elephants are too. The ranks of Zimbabwe's government are filled with Soviet military advisers, yet the coun262 THE FREEMAN • JULY 1991 try's Marxist leader, Robert Mugabe, recognizes property rights in wildlife as well as in land. When Mugabe transferred the responsibility for ele phants from government and wildlife agencies to the farmers and herdsmen on whose land the ele phants live, the elephant population in Zimbabwe grew by 5 percent a year, according to Zimbabwe's Department of Wildlife.

Farmers and herdsmen in Zimbabwe own the elephants roaming on their lands. If a big-game hunter wants to shoot an elephant in Zimbabwe, he buys a permit from a nearby village. This costs him some $25,000.There is no middle man. The permit fee goes directly to the villagers selling him the right to hunt an elephant. The schools, medical clinics,roads, and fences built with the funds ben efit everyone in the community. The hunters -by givingthe rural Zimbabweans a reason to consider the elephants creatures of value instead of danger ous pests-playa vital role in Zimbabwe's ele phant management program. Today Zimbabwe's problem is too many ele phants. At last count there were at least 5,000 more elephants in Zimbabwe than the country's wilderness can sustain. Wildlife Service officialsin Zimbabwe are forced to cull about 5,000 to 7,000 elephants every year or the animals will eat themselves out of house and home.

If the Kenyan government weren't averse to applying economic incentives to protect its wildlife,it could buy Zimbabwe's excess elephants to replenish Kenya's disappearing herds. Kenya's President Daniel arap Moi faces a future where elephants willbe wiped out in his country by 2005. A vocal supporter of the ivory ban, Kenya has been a de facto one-party state since independence in 1963. Moi holds fast to the trappings of social ism: despite Kenya's pretensions to democracy (voters must publicly line up behind photos of their candidates during "elections"), the U.S. State Department's CountryReportson Human Rights Practicesreports political killings and torture and police brutality every year-events unlikely to appear in tourist brochures or pamphlets from wildlife conservation groups advocating Kenya's wildlife management policy.The wildlifein Kenya is as regulated as the citizens, and a no-questions asked tribunal (poachers are shot on sight) is the rule of the savannah.

"The Kenyan government manages their ele phants the way the East Germans tried to manage their economy: with armed guards, electric fences, and central planning. The result is a sad cycle of blame-passing and demands for greater control. Meanwhile, elephants die," explains Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a freemarket advocacy group. The grasslands of Kenya are a virtual war zone between government game wardens attacking by jeep and poachers with automatic weapons steal ing in on foot. Kenyan newspapers report that a Western tourist was shot and injured in the cross fire. Despite Moi's all-out efforts to subdue the poachers, Kenya's elephant population has fallen by 75 percent since 1981, according to statistics published by the World Wildlife Fund, a leader in supporting the ivory trade ban. Tanzania and oth er central and eastern African countries recorded similar drops in their elephant populations.

"Propertyof the People" Moi, who was recently reelected without oppo sition for his third five-year term, considers ele phants roaming on Kenyan soil the "property of the people." Kenyans "own" the elephants as part of their national and cultural heritage-just as all Americans "own" the bald eagles. Yet symbolic ownership is not the same as legal ownership. Kenyans have no daily incentive to act responsibly toward the elephants because they don't own them in the legal sense the Zimbabweans do. When something is said to be owned by everyone, it is owned by no one. And what no one owns, no one considers his responsibility. Advocates of the ivory ban don't dispute the statistics indicating that countries supporting trade in ivory are also seeing a rise in their ele phant populations. "We recognize that the status of the elephant is not the same everywhere in Africa," said Michael Sutton of the World Wildlife Fund in an interview last summer. The U.S. government "agrees that the elephants' situation is not identical throughout Africa," but argues that, nonetheless, the only way to solve the problem of the shrinking elephant herds is an "acrossthe-board ban," according to an official at the Fish and Wildlife Service. "We felt the only responsible thing to do was to say 'no' to all ivory," he said.

Acrossthe-board bans on trade in rhinoceros and sea turtle products have done nothing to preELEPHANTS AND IVORY 263 "Banning trade in ivory does not address the pressing problem of rural communities competing with wildlife for increasingly scarce land and resources." vent a flourishingblack market in powdered rhi no horn and other products. Nor have those trade bans given the people who live in the animals' environment the incentives to protect them. Yet even if the ivory ban did eliminate the world market for ivory, that would solve only half the problem. At 3percent, Africahas the highesthumanpop ulation growth rate in the world. Elephants in many sections of the continent are reproducing even more quickly.Today there are 500 million people in Africa,and 80 to 90 percent of them live in rural agrariancommunities.The carryingcapac ity of the African wildernessis already at its limit in manyareas,accordingto a report fromthe Zim babwe Department of Wildlife.Lifeon the savan nah is becomingan almost dailystrugglebetween man and beast.

Stampeding elephants are destructive. A farmer's first reaction when he sees an elephant maraudingthrough his newlyplanted fieldis to go after it with a gun-unless he knows the elephant might bring him and his neighbors several thou sand dollars from a trophy permit. Making ele phants valuablegivesfarmers and rural villagersa reason to figure out how to share their lands with the otherwisetroublesomeanimals."Weare living where elephants are nuisances.Surely as soon as youremovethose [economic]benefitsand the ele phants destroy a village,the peasants are goingto killthem. You don't even need poachersto killthe elephants," Bvuma said. Banning trade in ivory does not address the pressing problem of rural communitiescompetingwith wildlifefor increas inglyscarceland and resources. Farmers and herdsmen in "southern African countries should not have to suffer because their neighboring governments to the north and east cannot keep their animals alive," Thabo Yalala, an officialat the Botswanaembassy,said in a 1990 interview.

The 36 Africancountrieswhere elephantsroam are among the poorest in the world: the 1988 per capita GNP in 21 of those countries was below $500, according to the World Wildlife Fund. In poor countries poaching is a tempting alternative to farming the arid soil or protecting animals on game reserves and national parks. The average Kenyan earns $20 a month; rangers at Tsavo National Park in Kenya earn about $50 a month. But poachers rake in many times as much from a singleday's kill. One elephant tusk bringsin hun dreds of dollars, and hides from the animals are almostas valuable.Profitfar outweighsthe poach er's chances of being shot on sight, as is law and commonpractice in most of Africa. In Zimbabwe,villagers havea vestedinterest in the long-term well-being of their elephants. It wouldn't make economicsense for rural Zimbab weans to supplement their incomes by poaching. Todaypoachingin Zimbabweis "minimal,almost nonexistent," since the program was put into effect,accordingto Bvuma.Poachingin his coun trydropped byover90 percent whenMugabegave the villagersstewardshipof the elephants. Mean while,poachers in Kenya kill 300 elephants a day.

Had Zimbabwe'sdelegatesto the 1989Conven tionon InternationalTradein Endangered Species signedthe ivoryban, they wouldhaveundermined the rural villagers' incentive to share their land with the elephants.By givingeconomicincentives to rural farmers and herdsmen, Mugabe created an effective stewardship relationship between nature and man. The "made in Switzerland"solu tion mayhavewonkudosfromarmchairconserva tionists,but the clockis running out for elephants living outside the "made in Zimbabwe" wildlife management programs. D 264 Government Is StranglingTransit by John Semmens P ublicly owned and operated transit has been a colossal failure. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been frittered away with little or nothing to show for it. In 1964, the year the Urban Mass Transporta tion Administration was created by Congress, eight billion trips were taken on urban transit car riers. Twenty-sevenyears later, public transit rider ship is still eight billion trips. This total lack of progress hasn't been without cost. Since 1964 the federal government has squandered over $35 bil lion on public transit. State and local governments have tossed in another $30 billion.