Propaganda drums beat louder as CITES’ summit nears

Mbongeni Mguni | Monday August 1, 2022 12:18

What do Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift have to do with the debate around conservation and trophy hunting in Southern Africa?

From the early 1970s to the 1990s, Mark and Delia Owens, an American couple, travelled to and lived alone in the wildernesses of Botswana and Zambia, studying and interacting with lions and other carnivores.

The couple’s activities interacting with animals in the Deception Valley area of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve would be immortalised in the book “Cry of the Kalahari” published in 1984.

The book, an American and international bestseller translated into seven languages, inspired many in the US to study zoology and other related wildlife research qualifications. The award-winning personal account provided a glimpse into the “Dark Continent” and the brave struggles of a young couple risking life and limb to save endangered wildlife that most Americans had only heard about, all set in the remote and unforgiving wilderness of an under-developed country.

The Owenses would later travel to Zambia for similar work in the savanna, from where they would write “The Eye of the Elephant” focussing on their fight against poachers. Matriarch, Delia, would later release “Where the Crawdads Sing,” selling millions of copies and further underlining the family’s status as battle-hardened, gutsy bushwackers who gave up civilisation to go deep into Africa to help wild animals.

“Where the Crawdads Sing” has since been adapted into a major movie released a fortnight ago and produced by Hollywood star, Reese Witherspoon. Popular musician, Taylor Swift, moved by the book, wrote the song “Carolina” as a sort of homage for the movie.

“I wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story,” Taylor wrote on her Instagram recently.

It came as shock, therefore, when journalists revealed that the Owenses, Delia in particular, were wanted in Zambia for their alleged murder of a poacher, an action that was apparently caught on camera by major US network, ABC while filming a feature about the family’s conservation efforts in that country.

The incident, in 1995, apparently led to the family fleeing from Zambia amidst allegations that they were funding, training and running a paramilitary organisation apparently operating above the law, while publicly presenting themselves as champions of conservation and anti-poaching. The recent launch of the film has since been mired in controversy, particularly as Zambia continues its pursuit of justice and Americans who grew up on the Owenses’ legendary tales are having difficulties grasping the reality of the family’s approach to Africa.

For Southern Africans ahead of the key Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Panama, the revelations about the Owenses underline how the views around conservation policies can be misshapen in the West.

In the wake of the scandal, Americans have taken a closer look at the family’s publications and reported racist undertones and stereotypes that were previously either overlooked or accommodated by a reading public eager for insights into the “Dark Continent”.

The Owenses adventures, their pioneering spirit, dedication and books opened up a previously unknown, mysterious world for many young Americans in the 1980s and beyond, a good number of whom were inspired to become zoologists or enrol in other wildlife related sciences.

One such is University of Connecticut ecology professor, Daniel Bolnick, who wrote on social media about the Owenses well before the recent revelations about their past.

“I wanted to be like Mark and Delian Owens. I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. I wanted to fly a plane and live in the wilderness...

“Inspired by this book I spent a lot of time my senior year in high school working with biologists in central Africa traveling all over Zambia Botswana and Zimbabwe. Although I’m not an African wildlife biologist now, the book sent me on my current path.

“In retrospect, Cry of the Kalahari shows many of the classic colonialist problems of western scientists coming to Africa. In retrospect the authors are flawed people.

“Still a damn good book.”

For critics, the Owenses books, which echo the impact H. Rider Haggard’s 19th century novels of exotic African locations, mystery and adventure, shaped much of the views dominating today in the West about African wildlife and the competence of its governments to conduct conservation.

US journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently broke the story about the Owenses’ pending criminal charges in Zambia, wrote about the complex nature of the family’s interactions with the Africans they encountered in Botswana and Zambia.

“The Owenses' website referred to Africa as the "dark continent" until I noted this fact in The New Yorker. “Throughout their experiences in Botswana and Zambia, the Owenses gained a reputation for resenting the presence of Africans amid the animals they had come to study and protect.

“’Their whole attitude was 'Nice continent. Pity about the Africans,’ P. J. Fouche once told me,” Goldberg said, attributing the quote to a professional hunter in Zambia.

Similar views have been noted by regional leaders, who say criticism of their conservation policies often smacks of a colonial, superior attitude informed by long-held views that Africans simply cannot be trusted to take care of their wildlife.

“Why are you afraid to call it what it is,” President Mokgweetsi Masisi said three years ago, at the height of a global backlash over plans to re-introduce controlled elephant hunting quotas.

“It’s a racist onslaught. It’s racism.

“They talk as if we are the grass the elephants eat.

“It startles me when people sit in the comfort of where they are and lecture us about the management of species they don’t have.”

His counterpart, Hage Geingob has been similarly outspoken on the issue.

“I listened this morning to all the experts lecturing us and I wanted to ask where they come from,” he said at a 2019 Kasane meeting of regional leaders held to discuss strategies for elephant overpopulation.

“If they are from Europe or US, I wanted to ask them how they destroyed all their elephants, but come to lecture us.

“We have a problem because we have managed to protect ours. Our success is now our problem.

“We should actually be going to Europe and telling them how to manage elephants.”

Preconceived biases, often shaped by literature whether from the Owenses or Haggard, lie at the heart of clashes over conservation policy in Africa and ahead of the CITES meeting, the information battles and related narratives informed by these biases, are rising.

At that meeting, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia are pushing for a once-off sale of their ivory stockpiles, which have grown over their years from natural deaths and seizures from poachers.

For Botswana and the region to get its wish, two-thirds of the 184 CITES members or at least those in attendance in Panama, would have to agree.

Ivory sale proposals are horrifying to Western publics whose representatives at CITES have vehemently opposed any sales over the decades, arguing that the last auctions in 2008 worsened poaching and the decimation of key species such as elephants.

Despite being apparently unencumbered by preconceived biases, scientists also take similar irreconcilable positions on issues around conservation. Those in favour argue that controlled hunting and its revenues not only fund conservation but financially empowers communities living with the wildlife, while once-off sales of ivory stockpiles boosts governments’ conservation efforts. Those against say any type of hunting allows the infiltration and growth of poaching activities while giving poaching syndicates room to leverage on legal hunting to cash in on their kills.

Such divergent views spur information wars and articles published recently against Botswana appeared aimed at targeting government’s arguments in defence of hunting.

The articles in particular targetted the performance of Community-Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM), a model under which communities living in wildlife areas are empowered to derive direct benefits from their custodianship of the animals. The millions living in the Kavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) which runs across Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Angola and contains the world’s largest population of elephants by far, have had to mostly forego their traditional agricultural activities due to the overpopulation of the pachyderms. The CBNRM programmes in these countries are designed to replace the lost agricultural incomes and food sustainability, with earnings from tourism and hunting.

Researcher and journalist, Adam Cruise, in an apparently undercover operation, produced an article slamming the community empowerment argument in Botswana, after conducting a similar effort in Namibia last December.

“It has been stated ad nauseum that trophy hunting brings in necessary revenue for remote rural communities, and that the practice also provides assistance in increasing wildlife populations and mitigates human wildlife conflict, especially with elephants,” Cruise wrote.

“However, as this investigation and countless previous analyses and studies have shown, trophy hunting not only fails to provide any meaningful revenue for most individuals residing in and alongside Community Based Natural Resource Management areas but contributes to a potential collapse of elephant populations and fails to mitigate the incidences of elephant conflict scenarios.

“In short, trophy hunting in Botswana achieves the opposite of what its proponents proclaim.”

After his trip to Namibia, Cruise was quoted by Daily Maverick as saying: “We wanted to assess the areas earmarked for capture both in terms of how that might affect the elephant populations there and how they ostensibly benefit local communities.

“Namibia is always presented at CITES meetings as the exemplar of wildlife protection and community upliftment.

“But more and more studies have been questioning the efficacy of Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM).

“I needed to find out for myself.”

According to the Daily Maverick, Cruise and a fellow researcher who travelled with him, found that Namibia had “grossly misrepresented” its success with both conservation and community benefits.

“Far from being a success story, Namibia’s much-touted wildlife conservation model and its adherence to sustainable utilisation of wildlife through community-based management has, in fact, achieved the opposite of what is commonly presented.

“Overall wildlife numbers are declining and elephant populations in the Kunene Region are collapsing, while rural communities within the CBNRMs are as impoverished as ever, in many cases, more so.”

Botswana did not take Cruise’s allegations lying down. Pointing out the science behind the elephant quota system and detailing the millions of Pula that have accrued to communities since the resumption of hunting in 2020, Wildlife and National Parks director, Kabelo Senyatso hit back in the information war.

“Hunting has been ongoing for only two seasons in Botswana after the lifting of the hunting moratorium, therefore, there is no way that a conclusion can be made of the lack of impact on rural livelihoods from hunting,” he wrote.

“Reports such as the one by (Adam) Cruise should be disregarded as they are part of a crusade against trophy hunting, and against empowerment of local communities to derive benefits from the resources found within their locality.

“There is no scientific basis nor backing for any of the allegations that have been made in the report including the financial figures that are mentioned.”

Senyatso also made sure to note at in the first paragraph of his rejoinder that Cruise’s report was funded by Fondation Franz Weber. The Swiss NGO is a staunch anti-hunting foundation which believes all elephants should be listed on CITES’ highest protection level, a move that would remove the pachyderms from the list of animals allocated hunting quotas for in Botswana.

Namibian community organisations were similarly displeased with Cruise.

“This pair of journalists entered our conservancies and spoke to people without obtaining a research permit from the government or even informing our conservancy offices of their intentions,” they wrote in a rejoinder to Cruise’s report.

“Those of us who recall speaking to them and are quoted in their report were misrepresented, as our statements were taken out of context and used to tell a story about Namibia that is untrue.”

The statement concluded: “We remain the rightful custodians of free-ranging wildlife on communal lands and we will continue to expand our natural resource-based industries to increase benefit flows to our members.

“African people have been denigrated, misused and misrepresented for far too long for us to accept more of this appalling treatment at the hand of foreigners.

“We will not be bullied.”

The trouble with information wars is that the winner is not the one telling the best version of the truth, but the one with the loudest voice. Senyatso’s rejoinder barely made it out of the country’s borders, while the Namibian response similarly met with muted response, when compared to the numbers Cruise’s report received.

The tactics ahead of the CITES meeting have also involved familiar threats by the region to quit the global group if their concerns are not accommodated. Senior officials from Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia and Namibia met in Hwange, Zimbabwe late May and reportedly signed a declaration, which among others, included “a clarion call for CITES not to interfere with domestic trade, the sovereignty of states, and their rights to sustainable use of wildlife”.

Following the meeting, official and unofficial threats to dump CITES and go it alone, emerged from some of the countries.

However, as experts have pointed out, not only do countries such as Zimbabwe and Botswana frequently make these threats before CITES meetings without following up on them, quitting CITES is a fruitless endeavour.

“The recent meetings - the conference in Hwange - are the same kind of thing done before the previous CITES conference,” says Keith Lindsay, elephant conservation biologist and CBNRM expert.

“Making a big noise and trying to lobby other governments to support their position at CoP19 in Panama in November.”

He continues: “To sell their Ivory outside the CITES framework, they would have to have a buyer who is also not a CITES member.

“China and Japan are parties to CITES, so they could not buy.

“North Korea is not in CITES, and is about the only possible buyer under that scenario.

“They don’t really have a domestic ivory market, so could only be a conduit for illegal trading to criminals in CITES member states.

“So it’s not really a serious suggestion to leave CITES; more of an empty threat.”

Analysts believe the information wars ahead of the CITES meeting are, in any case, a fool’s errand as those who will vote in November already have hardened positions, with no possibility of a surprise swing vote emerging.

Part of that, the analysts say, goes back to the narratives spun by the Owenses and Haggard. Even when the hero status is peeled away and the exhilarating literature revealed to be troubling, the attitudes they have produced prevail.