By David Braun
Investors in sport hunting in Uganda’s game parks have up to January next year to stop shooting wild animals for fun, The Uganda news site The New Vision reported recently.
According to The New Vision: “This follows a resolution from the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) to cancel hunting concessions offered years ago to the wildlife reserves.’We are concerned about the dwindling numbers of wild animals in the wildlife reserves. Hunting is prohibited,’ said Mark Kamanzi, the acting director of UWA.”
Kamanzi was reported as saying that the share of benefits of sport hunting were lopsided and unlikely to deter poaching or improve UWA¹s capacity to manage the wildlife reserves.
Wildlife managers had argued that the only way to save wildlife in Uganda was to use it to attract the private sector to invest in the management of wildlife reserves, The New Vision explained.
Nat Geo News Watch spoke to Dereck Joubert, a veteran wildlife filmmaker based in Africa who has been warning for years that hunting could be devastating the continent’s remaining herds of wild animals and especially their predators.
Dereck Joubert and his wife Beverly Joubert are National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence and founders of the National Geographic Big Cats Initiative, a program designed to restore and conserve Africa’s last wild lions, cheetahs, and leopards.
Dereck Joubert interviewed by David Braun
Uganda has re-imposed a ban on hunting, reportedly citing the failure of hunting concessions to halt dwindling of populations of wild animals in preserves. You have long been opposed to hunting as a means of conservation. What is the argument against controlled hunting as a means to give economic value to wildlife conservation? More....