Download Dr Philippe Chardonnet

Dr Philippe Chardonnet
IGF Foundation
58 Rue Beaubourg
Paris
75003
France
Email Address: [email protected]
Work Phone: +33 1 56 59 77 55
Title:
Wildlife ranching: ensuring present and future conservation benefits
Sub-theme: Biodiversity conservation
Format: Paper
Text:
The benefits of wildlife ranching cover a broad range despite being often overlooked. Benefits of wildlife ranching
are not restricted to production services and generation of income. Wildlife ranching also sets aside extensive
tracts of land as wilderness areas, which are powerful tools for (i) conserving biodiversity, and (ii) guaranteeing
the functioning of ecosystem services at global and local levels. In Southern Africa, wildlife ranching has clearly
increased wildlife abundance and diversity over the past decades. Considerable results have certainly been
achieved and can be demonstrated through figures of surfaces, stocks and variety. However, careful attention
should be paid on how this achievement is currently performed and should be maintained in the future to sustain
those positive impacts.
Wildlife proof fences establish tight compartments constraining the natural genetic flows. However, the modern
development of wildlife capture science and technology helps tackling the problem by compensating part of the
negative impact of partitioning fences. Nevertheless, how much intentional movement of wildlife replaces natural
flows remains largely unknown. More investigation is needed to assess properly the genetic consequences of the
compartmentalization and to take appropriate decisions for securing the natural functioning of genetic processes.
Intentional movements of wildlife species within a given country are often carried out with little consideration for
subspecies and strains. Most of the time, genuine sources of origin are not taken into consideration and taxa
below the species level are not a matter of concern. By stating that any individual eland is just an eland for
example, the eland species tends to become a single genetic pool at country level and to lose its diverse genetic
specificities at local level, without even considering specific local ecological adaptations (physiology and
behavior). Such a lack of traceability does not allow for conserving local strains and contributes to the rapid
homogenization of populations at the expense of biodiversity.
Intentional movements of wildlife are performed beyond borders with even more negative impact at global level.
For instance, importation of West and Central African roan antelopes or East African buffaloes into Southern
Africa are detrimental to the conservation of the respective taxa for the importing country (genetic pollution) and
also in terms of economy for the exporting countries losing their specific assets (their genuine taxa can be
valorized elsewhere). Similarly, exportation of lions bred in captivity (canned lions) to other countries for
reintroduction, or worse, reinforcement purposes to free-ranging situations, is extremely hazardous as it
threatens genuine local strains with (i) sanitary risks due to high density intensive breeding conditions and inbred
genealogy reducing the fitness and the capacity of adaptation, (ii) genetic risks with first, mixing all sorts of
provenances and second, selection of particular characteristics. Overall, such practices contribute to the
globalization of wildlife at the expense of its biodiversity which is also essential for the adaptation to climate
change.
Creating new taxa is another matter of concern. Genetic manipulations are performed in some wildlife ranches
either by hybridizing species or by crossing subspecies/strains or by extreme inbreeding within taxa for selecting
particular traits to express recessive characters. Behind this management practices are mainly profit-orientated
approaches that neglect wildlife ranching’s conservation objectives. Wildlife ranching businesses search to attract
non-expert wildlife viewing and hunting tourists with fancy colored animals, unusually large trophies and even
freak animals. Whatever justification will be provided to follow such practices, genetically modified animals
undermine the integrity of biodiversity, even maybe ecosystem services. And beyond the ethical question, the risk
of genetic pollution may be low if the compartmentalization is tight. However, this is never guaranteed and its
control remains always difficult.
The wildlife ranching industry, which contributes so much to nature conservation at local and global levels, is not
well served by such dangerous practices. To the contrary, the general adoption of best practices in this field such as the IUCN principles and guidelines for introduction, reintroduction and translocation - would enhance the
role and value of the industry. Private interests should never jeopardize public interests, in particular related to
the value of conserving biodiversity and allowing for adaptation to climate change: reinforcing public interests at
local and global level would help private interests of wildlife ranchers to strengthen and develop the whole
industry.