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decades. Communities, particularly those facing excruciating poverty, must become partners if 

 wildlife is to persist on communal lands. Partnership with communities means not only sharing of 

 revenue, but their active participation in decision making and granting them legal rights over 

 wildlife and other natural resources 



There has been some controversy regarding Zimbabwe's Campfire Program because community 

 benefits are derived from utilization (consumptive utilization— hunting—particularly of elephants 

 as a primary source of revenue). The privately initiated Cullman Wildlife Project in Tanzania and 

 Zambia's community conservation program also rely on consumptive strategies, although not of 

 elephants. However abhorrent utilization is to some, in less than a decade since the Campfire 

 program began the amount of land in Zimbabwe devoted to wildlife has expanded from 1 2% (all 

 in the govenunent system) to 33% of the country, with the bulk of the new wildlife areas on 

 commercial and communal lands. Overall, biological diversity, private landowners, and poor 

 communities have been the winners. In the case of the Tanzanian parks department and Kenya 

 and Uganda wildlife authorities, at least to date, community benefits have come from non- 

 consumptive nature tourism. However, the underlying principle of these diverse programs is the 

 same — wildlife will not survive in Africa amid a sea of poverty. Wildlife will not survive outside 

 protected areas unless the benefits that accrue to communities are greater than other — often 

 environmentally destructive ~ forms of land use. 



LESSONS LEARNED 



In reviewing this wildlife-related experience, what are the broader lessons we can learn for the 

 fiiture of natural resource management in Africa? 



The first is a matter of principle—the only conservation projects that offer a genuine alternative to 

 the continued over-consumption of natural capital are those that combine human development 

 with environmental concerns. 



Second, finding ways to increase production through more intensive development of good 

 agricultural lands will be important to relieve pressure on Africa's vast areas of fragile marginal 

 arid and semi-arid land (which is better devoted to wildlife and pastoralism). But increased 

 production will not suffice unless inequitable access to productive lands is also addressed at the 

 national level. 



Third, Africa must develop a modem industrial and urban economy to absorb its growing 

 population, while avoiding the intense environmental and social destruction that plagued South 

 Africa's rush to development during the apartheid era. 



Fourth, that sustainable resource development alternatives for the poor, especially poor women, 

 are not simply or even primarily a process of transferring new technology, but an institutional and 



