The premise of Dr Stephanie Klarmann’s article, Dead wild animals by numbers — Professional Hunters Association stats tell a grim tale, (Daily Maverick, 8 April 2025) is understandable. It comes from a place, and an organisation – the Conservation Action Trust – that is completely anti consumptive use. Let me be a little clearer: completely anti the use of wildlife through hunting tourism.
I’m a hunter who works for a pro sustainable use organisation, The Origins Foundation, whose mission is to champion sustainable use of natural resources in which people are intimately involved.
I’m definitively pro consumptive use. The reason? There are significant benefits to communities and wildlife that come from the consumptive use/hunting tourism sector.
However, is the hunting industry infallible? The answer is no. Do we have bad apples? Do we have bad actors? The answer is yes and yes, and unfortunately, they are amplified, given that we kill animals. Do we have people undertaking hunting tourism with a strong wildlife conservation and community benefit lens? The answer is very much yes.
When Dr Klarmann notes that tens of thousands of animals died in the name of sport and entertainment in 2023, it denigrates the activity of consumptive use. With a single statement, an entire readership just believed that consumptive-use tourism devalues wildlife to merely killing for fun.
I would propose, through the actual reality on the ground, that consumptive use of wildlife brings significant benefit to wildlife and people throughout South Africa, specifically the very rural parts of South Africa.
On the ground reality
Let me give you an example. I read Dr Klarmann’s article while I was in the middle of Zululand, South Africa, a little southwest of Pongola. Her article was published a couple of hours after I had met the community chairperson of an area that is leased to a hunting operator.
In my meeting with the chairperson, I asked him a very direct question: Is hunting good or is hunting bad for his community and his people? His response, as well as the community chairperson’s response from a neighbouring community the day before, were almost identical. If they could hunt more, they would.
If Dr Klarmann had been here with me, she would have heard from the chairpersons a very direct conservation and economic mindset to the wildlife from the actual owners of this wildlife, and the direct owners of the land (ie, not wealthy landowners). They see the tangible community benefit by having hunting operators lease the land from them.
To them, it’s the win-win-win economic-wildlife model. The chairperson explained that lease fees, trophy fees, are distributed between every single member of the community (130 people). Meat that is distributed that is in excess is sold to the local butcher and the money derived from that is used for community needs – from getting drivers’ licences for community members wanting to be taxi drivers or transport services, to game ranger certifications for future employment – the list goes on and on and on.
Hunting is good for their people.
Rhino reality
Let me get specific on rhinos, as Dr Klarmann spoke specifically about their value. In this area, there is an amalgamation of private landowners as well as community lands that are all pushing a massive rhino conservation effort (actually quite impressive).
What Dr Klarmann failed to acknowledge in her article was the fact that due to anti-consumptive use rhetoric that has been in place since 1977, the value of a live rhino has plummeted.
Rhinos on the open auction market have gone from $30,000 10-15 years ago to an order of magnitude less, or even being looked at to give away free because of the liability of owning rhinos today.
The lack of trade and regulations on export tied to consumptive use have led to rhinos being continually devalued. When Dr Klarmann talks about a rhino being $35,000 to hunt and kill, if you polled hunters, we agree they should be twice or three times that figure.
However, given the climate that the anti-consumptive use organisations have created, that’s the reality we now face – $35,000 to $70,000 is the highest live value for a single rhino anywhere – and this is through consumptive use.
How am I so sure about that? Show me a non-consumptive use individual (or over a photographic season) paying $35,000 to see a rhino and take a photo of a rhino. You can’t.
Dr Klarmann notes that a better use of that $35,000 would be to invest in fencing, anti-poaching units and community upliftment.
This is likely to be one of the places where I agree with her. That is exactly what’s happening with the dollars being raised to hunt these rhinos. I’ve literally just seen it with my own eyes over the past five days.
I followed the anti-poaching units on their boundary patrols. I’ve watched the canine unit training in anticipation of incursions. I’ve interacted with the chairpersons, explaining how the community is benefiting. I have seen the veterinary and chopper investments in dehorning to protect these rhinos.
How is this all happening? It is a very simple, logical question with a simple, logical answer. It’s because someone decided that they would value the rhino at $35,000 or more.
The assertion that a hunter should come in and give $35,000 without undertaking a consumptive-use model on the rhino can easily be returned, and that finger pointed at every single photographic tourist that wants to take a picture of a rhino.
Ask any photographic tourist to pay $35,000 for a photo and see their response.
Additionally, Dr Klarmann’s proposed solution to hunting, ie, darting a rhino for a photo opportunity, illustrates the lack of research and understanding of the issue.
First, it’s illegal to do that in KwaZulu-Natal. A version of it is only legal in the Eastern Cape and Northern Cape (rhino-darting experience, with immobilisation done by a vet).
Second, reducing rhinos to a photo op through this mechanism is exactly what the devaluation of rhinos looks like. So Dr Klarmann’s proposed solution instead wants to tranquilise the same rhino 10 times over to value it at the same price as a consumptive use model?
Is there a true understanding of the animal welfare issues around that proposed idea? And it is worth mentioning once more – green hunting for the sake of immobilisation (and the photo op) is illegal.
Dr Klarmann talks about the scale of wildlife needed to support consumptive use tourism, but fails to understand how South Africa has come to have its extensive wildlife resources today.
In the 1970s, wildlife and its ownership were transferred to a private landowner ownership model. That ownership, to community, government and individual landowners, has resulted in wildlife going from an estimated 500,000 head to an estimated seven million to 20 million head of wildlife today on private grounds alone.
As I stated earlier in this article, hunters aren’t infallible, and the hunting industry isn’t infallible. Dr Klarmann does point out areas in which we ourselves are devaluing the wildlife that we chase.
The hunting industry has a gold star that we can hang our hat on, and that is the true valuation of wildlife, and devaluing an aardvark to $100 doesn’t do the wildlife we love so much the justice it deserves.
Why we need hunting
Unfortunately, the entire point of Dr Klarmann’s article suggests that hunting tourism needs to be a relic of the past and replaced with non-consumptive tourism.
This is impossible.
Ask photographic lodges all around South Africa. Are they running at 100% capacity? No.
Will tourists spend hours getting into tick-infested, low animal-density areas? No.
What is Dr Klarmann’s and the Conservation Action Trust’s plan to support the people we have just interacted with here in KwaZulu-Natal if South Africa turned its back on consumptive use tourism?
There are photographic tourism operators all around us, just barely staying afloat at 35% occupancy. Who is going to pay the communities? Where is the employment coming from? Who will protect the rhinos? Who will protect the habitat? Who?
The land where I am writing this from would be immediately converted to cattle, mining, and sugarcane if hunting were stopped. A thriving Big Five here would be exterminated immediately with their removal via dogs, spears and snares.
The habitat? Eliminated forever by mining and agriculture.
Is that what Dr Klarmann and the Conservation Action Trust want? I know her exact response – that won’t happen. Photographic non-consumptive use tourism will replace it. Or the general public will pay philanthropically.
Simply: no, they won’t. When hunting is stopped, they will clink champagne glasses in their fancy offices in Cape Town while at the very same time, a magnificent male lion will be dying slowly in a poacher’s snare because the community refuses to live with that lion without any economic value coming to them from it.
That’s the reality of on-the-ground wildlife conservation.
If you don’t believe me, I just called the community chairperson. He wants to introduce you to his community. DM