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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.