An economic lesson in trophy hunting, property rights, the importance of incentives, and unintended consequences

From Mark Perry.

"The New York Times featured an article a few days ago (“A Hunting Ban Saps a Village’s Livelihood“) that provides some important economic lessons in property rights, the importance of incentives, and the law of unintended consequences, here are some excerpts:

SANKUYO, Botswana — Lions have been coming out of the surrounding bush, prowling around homes and a small health clinic, to snatch goats and donkeys from the heart of this village on the edge of one of Africa’s great inland deltas. Elephants, too, are becoming frequent, unwelcome visitors, gobbling up the beans, maize and watermelons that took farmers months to grow.

Since Botswana banned trophy hunting two years ago, remote communities like Sankuyo have been at the mercy of growing numbers of wild animals that are hurting livelihoods and driving terrified villagers into their homes at dusk. The hunting ban has also meant a precipitous drop in income. Over the years, villagers had used money from trophy hunters, mostly Americans, to install toilets and water pipes, build houses for the poorest, and give scholarships to the young and pensions to the old.

Calls to curb trophy hunting across Africa have risen since a lion in Zimbabwe, named Cecil by researchers tracking it, was killed in July by an American dentist. Several airlines have stopped transporting trophies from hunts, and lawmakers in New Jersey have introduced legislation that would further restrict their import into the United States.
But in Sankuyo and other rural communities living near the wild animals, many are calling for a return to hunting. African governments have also condemned, some with increasing anger, Western moves to ban trophy hunting.

“Before, when there was hunting, we wanted to protect those animals because we knew we earned something out of them,” said Jimmy Baitsholedi Ntema, a villager in his 60s. “Now we don’t benefit at all from the animals. The elephants and buffaloes leave after destroying our plowing fields during the day. Then, at night, the lions come into our kraals.”

In early 2014, this sparsely populated nation became one of a few African countries with abundant wildlife to put an end to trophy hunting, the practice at the core of conservation efforts in southern Africa. President Seretse Khama Ian Khama of Botswana, a staunch defender of animal rights, stated that hunting was no longer compatible with wildlife conservation and urged communities like Sankuyo to switch to photographic tourism. The decision was cheered by animal welfare groups in the West.

In 2010, Sankuyo earned nearly $600,000 from the 120 animals — including 22 elephants, 55 impalas and nine buffaloes — that it was allowed to offer to trophy hunters that year, said Brian Child, an associate professor at the University of Florida, who is leading a study on the impact of the ban. Botswana’s wildlife officials, who set the annual quotas, last allowed a lion to be hunted in Sankuyo in 2006.

Among the benefits to the community, 20 households chosen by lottery received outdoor toilets, all painted in pastel colors that stand out in a village turned brown in the dry season. Standpipes were installed in courtyards, connecting 40 families to running water. “That’s what made people appreciate conservation,” said Gokgathang Timex Moalosi, 55, Sankuyo’s chief. “We told them, ‘That lion or elephant has paid for your toilet or your standpipe.’

Where trophy hunting benefits communities, locals are more motivated to protect wild animals as a source of revenue, experts say. But in most places without trophy hunting, they are simply considered a nuisance or danger, and locals are more likely to hunt them for food or to kill them to defend their homes and crops.

Galeyo Kobamelo, 37, said he had lost all 30 goats in the kraal just outside his family compound to lions and hyenas since the hunting ban. Elephants had destroyed his fields of sorghum and maize. With the hunting ban, his family no longer receives the free meat that hunters left behind. His mother, Gomolemo Semalomba, 58, no longer receives a pension, about $100 twice a year.

MP: As the principles of economics would predict: a) when there are no well defined property rights for wildlife in Botswana, b) when there are no economic incentives for local villagers to protect wildlife and participate in the revenue and profits those animals generate from trophy hunting, c) when animals like elephants compete for scarce food resources with African villagers, d) when animals like lions kill the villagers’ domesticated farm animals like goats, then it’s no surprise that the wild animals will be rightfully considered by the local villagers as a nuisance and danger with no economic benefits. As stated in the NY Times article, because of the trophy hunting ban in Botswana, the villagers of Sankuyo have “gone back to hating animals.”

In Steven E. Landsburg’s More Sex is Safer Sex he points out that “Closing sweatshops and forcing Western labor and environmental standards down poor people’s throats in the third world does nothing to elevate them out of poverty.” Let me revise that statement slightly and point out that “Ending trophy hunting in Africa and forcing misguided Western standards of wildlife conservation down villagers’ throats in Africa does nothing to elevate them out of poverty, and in fact does a lot to make them much, much poorer.”

Professor Landsburg also commented profoundly in The Armchair Economist that: “Most of economics can be summarized in four words: ‘People respond to incentives.’ The rest is commentary.” The case of the trophy hunting ban in Botswana provides some powerful and important economic commentary about those four words."