At CITES 1989 the delegates were told that it would cost US $ 200 per square kilometer to protect Africa’s elephants in their natural... »
Ron Thomson Blog
National Park Management Option (Part Seven)
At CITES 1989 the delegates were told that it would cost US $ 200 per square kilometer to protect Africa’s elephants in their natural habitats against commercial poachers. And that to similarly protect black rhinos it would cost a staggering US $ 1 200 per square kilometer. The cost of applying these protective measures... »
National Park Management Option (Part Six)
There would be a carrot-and-a-stick incentive in this agreement to which the local people would have to agree if they wanted the benefits. The carrot would be the community levies. The stick would be the high cost to the community of every animal found poached. This penalty would be the removal from the quota... »
National Park Management Option (Part Five)
The park undertook, also, to upgrade the people’s agricultural endeavors and to help to build the schools and clinics and whatever else the people needed, through an innovative national-park-sponsored NGO program. Huntable male animals, earmarked for culling, would NOT be culled. Instead they would be killed by high-fee-paying hunters, in special hunting zones within... »
National Park Management Option (Part Four)
The new administration made the listing of the park’s assets a priority, and it set about the task of eliminating the poaching. It ignored the ultimate cause of the poaching – the black market – but correctly identified all the proximate causes that had induced the poaching. THEN it set in motion a plan... »
National Park Management Option (Part Three)
The best solution would be for African governments to enter into long-term 50/50 partnership agreements with Black Economic Empowerment business enterprises. Government should provide the land, the habitats, the animals and the basic policy guidelines – and it should retain a watchdog role to ensure that the principles of the national wildlife policies are not... »
National Park Management Option (Part Two)
National parks, today, are becoming ever more complicated business enterprises with sometimes-huge personnel establishments; and unless they are run as successful businesses, in the long term, they will not survive. People skills -how to manage people – is, therefore, one of the most important attributes that the head of a national park organization needs... »
National Park Management Option (Part One)
What I am about to say applies more to the rest of Africa than it does to South Africa, at this time. Nevertheless, in due course, it will apply to South Africa, too. So this chapter is not out of context with the South African situation. Although South Africa’s wildlife management practices are more... »
Kruger national park’s new elephant management plan. (Part 2)
I see a number of flaws in this plan that make me believe it will ultimately be abandoned and replaced with a better one. The plan is based on the assumption that, because adult elephants show strong fidelity to their home ranges, no elephant movement will occur between the management blocks. I don’t think... »
Kruger national park’s new elephant management plan. (Part 1)
The Kruger Park scientists have devised an innovative management plan that they believe covers all the most likely contingencies that affect bio‑diversity in the park. I am intrigued by the concept ‑ but don’t like the plan. I don’t like it because I believe it will NOT achieve its desired objectives, and because I... »
Biome Management. (Part 3).
Two schools of thought have developed about the provision of artificial water in a national park. The first says that ‑ in compliance with the international dogma ‑ no artificial water supplies should be provided. Others ‑ like me ‑believe water should be provided to the extent that it becomes a non‑limiting factor. The... »