1.Front section - IUCN

The role of hunting in promoting protected areas 4
in support of a given protected area will depend on
how the ecological, political, historical and social
context shape the nature of the interactions. For
example, while trophy hunting seems to offer promise
as a means of generating significant money for some
protected areas, it is much less feasible in tropical
forest areas with no animals of interest to trophy
hunters. Additionally, some species do not have the
biological characteristics to allow hunting to be
sustainable in any economically significant fashion.
Likewise, where laws prohibit all types of resource
extraction, hunting could not become a conservation
tool.
Description of the
interest group
Humans have hunted since before they became
human and hunting remains of interest and
importance to many human populations around the
world. Animals have been, and are, valued by humans
for a broad variety of reasons (Redford and Robinson,
1991; Redford et al., 1995) ranging from food to
religion. Arguably, the most important value humans
place on animals is for food both for subsistence and
commercial purposes. Wild animals are also used for
other subsistence purposes including clothing, tools,
medicine and material for handicrafts and ritual.
Many of these animal products have acquired
commercial value in local, national and international
markets – particularly for luxury uses such as furs,
ivory and meat, or for traditional Chinese medicine.
Wild animals have other values that are nonconsumptive
in nature. These include religious and
spiritual values, values due to the willingness of
tourists to pay to see them, and value as components
of function of ecosystems (e.g. seed dispersal,
predation, nutrient cycling). Though usually valued
positively, animals can have negative values in some
contexts such as when feeding in gardens, preying on
livestock or humans, or transmitting diseases.
Although hunting is very common, it has often been
controlled by social factors. In different settings
hunting is limited by season, by sex, by bag limit, and
by type of hunter. Control of hunting has often been
done by those in power, wishing to control the
harvesting by others. This association between
© Kent Redford
hunting and power is part and parcel of the European
experience (Cartmill, 1993) and was carried by
Europeans to their colonies, colouring the way both
hunting and park establishment were conducted
(Mackenzie, 1997). For example, the British occupiers
of India, wishing to hunt tigers and lions, treated with
favours those Indian princes who could offer big game
hunts in hunting preserves (Rangarajan, 2001).
Control of hunting by those in power inevitably
results, and has always resulted, in the extinguishing
of harvest rights by those less powerful. Rights to hunt
have been taken and either kept or reassigned in nontraditional
patterns. This fact is part and parcel of all
consideration of hunters as collaborators in park
establishment and management. In many settings
outside of Europe and the United States hunting is
among the most contentious of topics for people
living in and near protected areas and wishing to
continue their cultural practices of hunting (c.f.
Oilwatch and World Rainforest Movement, 2004). In
this piece we do not specifically address the issues of
traditional rights and legality of the hunting, but these
are vital issues for all practitioners engaging hunters
as a new constituency for protected areas.
Kayapó young woman with hummingbird, Brazil.
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