PICTURE: Non-consumptive tourism has much to do with photography and game viewing than sport hunting.
NON-CONSUMPTIVE tourism refers to holiday business which is done without one being engaged in hunting. In can also be called photographic tourism.
Non-consumptive tourism includes activities like walking trails, sight seeing, horse riding, canoeing, surfing, wildlife photography and visiting heritage sites. It is the form of tourism that popularised the saying: “Take nothing other than memories and leave nothing other than footprints.”
Non-consumptive tourism has been in existence alongside consumptive tourism. It is contributing immensely our economy. It’s only that in Zimbabwe, non-consumptive tourism has been overshadowed by the later for long time. In the 1980s, our Government promoted the concept of sustainable utilisation of natural resources with much focus on what is called Communal Areas Management of Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE).
Under CAMPFIRE, communal areas adjacent to safari areas were urged to protect natural resources in order for them to benefit from sport hunted animals. A safari area is a land near a national park where hunting is permitted under State laws.
Benefits of consumptive tourism included that tourists who visited Zimbabwe on sport hunting missions would pay huge sums of money per day in lodging fees, food, and the acquisition of their hunting permits. Such tourists were assumed to stay longer in the country since they would sometimes wait for their desired animal to be available in the authorised safari area.
To a common person in the communal lands, a safari hunt would mean availability of meat from a hunted animal. Sport hunters were much concerned with their trophies which usually included animal skins and animal heads or horns. Also a sport hunt would mean cash for the communities by the end of year as rural district councils who overseen CAMPFIRE programmes would release dividends to the beneficiaries.
Mid 1990s, winds started to blow in a different direction. In 1997, a platform called Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) posed CAMPFIRE with serious challenges. CITES sought to control the trade in animals which generated huge cash under sport hunting, that is the African elephant (Loxodonta Africana). Zimbabwe became a CITES member in 1981 and hosted the 1997 convention in Harare.
PICTURE: Non-consumptive tourism calls for admiring wildlife and leave it in its natural state.
The elephant was included in Appendix II of CITES. This Appendix meant that the African elephant of Zimbabwe was not necessarily threatened with extinction but could become so if trade weren’t strictly regulated. Since then, there has been a ban in ivory trade. Relief was only acquired on a footnote of the Appendix that specifically allowed for trade in live animals to appropriate and acceptable destinations.
The trade in live elephants’ conditions included that the CITES Management Authority of Zimbabwe might grant such permits when satisfied that the permits were obtained in accordance with national law; that the CITES Scientific Authority of Zimbabwe advised that the export will not be detrimental to the survival of the elephants; and that the CITES management Authority of Zimbabwe was satisfied that the shipping would not pose injury, damage to health or cruel treatment to the animals.
In the second decade of the 2000s, green groups or anti-hunting groups gave intense pressure to totally ban sport hunting of all species. In April 2014, United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) suspended imports of sport-hunted African elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Tanzania. USFWS argued that wildlife in Zimbabwe is not well managed. This was due to 300 elephants in Hwange National Park which had succumbed to cyanide poisoning by poachers in the previous year.
PICTURE: Tourists on non-consumptive tourism take home good memories.
Zimbabwe resorted to trade in live animals to China as allowed in Appendix II of CITES but its efforts have been under heavy criticism from green groups. Also, when news broke out of the killing of Cecil, a collared lion which was under research in Hwange National Park, a global outcry ensued that the camera lens should be used to shoot animals instead of the bullet.
Some tourism analysts argue that non-consumptive tourism really pays better than consumptive tourism. They claim that non-consumptive tourism’s net income per annum is at the 50 million-dollar mark as compared to consumptive tourism which sits at $2.2 million.
While Zimbabwe is bracing itself for the CITES convention to be held this month in South Africa where it is advocating for the lift of the ivory sale ban, non-consumptive tourism shall keep contributing to the economy of the country.