Wanted Dead and Alive: Are Hunting and Protection of Endangered Species Compatible?

To protect endangered species, wildlife departments must generate revenue through some additional activities, which may vary by the country situation. This paper suggests that the protection of endangered species may require some legalization of hunting to provide a revenue base.

In many west and central African countries, all forms of hunting are illegal, therefore the enforcement of selective hunting may be difficult. It would also be difficult to deter hunting in areas where endangered species exist. In addition, law enforcement corruption may divert fines from reaching the wildlife department.

The introduction of a permit system without an additional revenue base could result in the need for trophy hunting, which could bring in larger revenues. This would present a trade-off between allowing the killing of rare animals as a trophy versus accepting that some will be killed illegally. The fees collected for trophy hunts would most likely exceed the fines imposed on illegal hunters, but this also raises a moral issue of the hunting of rare species.

Both hunting technology and enforcement technology are important to whether selective hunting is possible or not.

This paper discusses a single period model to explore cost recovery. "In a single period analysis, permits appear to reduce hunter welfare. However, the price of a permit could be set to manipulate common species numbers in the long run, thereby improving hunter welfare relative to the open access situation."

In less developed countries, cost recovery is an important issue, and therefore the model discussed herein could have far reaching implications.