Document from KZN Wildlife - Mon Mar 05, 2012

[Lisbeth]

"Conservation is an ethic of resource use, allocation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world.

The principal value underlying most expressions of the conservation ethic is that the natural world has intrinsic and intangible worth along with utilitarian value.

In the United States of America, the year 1864 saw the publication of two books which laid the foundation for Romantic and Utilitarian conservation traditions in America. The posthumous publication of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden", established the grandeur of unspoiled nature as a citadel to nourish the spirit of man. From George Perkins Marsh a very different book, "Man and Nature", later subtitled "The Earth as Modified by Human Action", catalogued his observations of man exhausting and altering the land from which his sustenance derives.

In 1933 Aldo Leopold published his book on Game Management in which he laid down some of the first principles of sustainable utilization of natural resources. He followed this with "A Sand County Almanac", a discourse on Man`s negative impact on nature.

Though South Africa proclaimed the first National Parks in Africa in 1895, conservation management backed by scientific research only really started in the middle of the twentieth century. Often a case of trial and error, some of our well meaning efforts to correct or modify natural systems did not turn out as we wanted.

Many years ago, rangers in the Natal Parks Board were treated to a series of lectures by Professor Eugene Dekker, a wildlife expert from the USA.

Apart from calling us "randy rangers", not without cause I might add, he described our management style as going from one extreme to the other. In other words our management was too intrusive and then we had to intervene to correct our mistakes. Our excuse was that our parks were small and fenced, therefore had to be managed intensively. Be that as it may, it highlights the fact that this practice of managing natural resources is a very new and often experimental business.

The number of times conservation management has turned into a disaster are too numerous to record here.

The simple fact is that we just do not know enough about natural systems and processes. On top of this, our scale of view is very short. Something we view as a disaster often turns out to be a natural occurrence in a long natural cycle.

In Kenya, a decision was taken in the eighties by the Wildlife authorities, to introduce lions to the Aberdare National Park to enhance the tourism experience. Lions are animals of the open savannah. The Aberdares are a heavily forested mountain range. Lions are opportunists and adaptable. The easiest prey species were the Bongo antelope and the Giant Forest Hogs. These two species have been virtually wiped out in the last twenty years.

The Wildlife Authorities now have to resort to expensive breeding and reintroduction programmes and in the last few years have had to cull some two hundred lions in this iconic national Park!

In modern conservation management, another burning issue is preservation or exploitation. By this I mean maintaining or re-establishing natural systems or modifying and enhancing them to maximise utilization through tourism or harvesting.

There are so many fine lines. Do protected areas have an intrinsic national value which justifies their protection and maintenance by the state, or, must they generate enough revenue to be self funding?"

The second option often destroys the first!