The Back Forty

The on-line edition of The Economist (January 14) , in its ‘Green.view’ environmental column, contains a brief article based on work by Mike Norton-Griffiths. Norton-Griffiths, an ecologist who has become one of the most articulate analysts of the economic and policy dimensions of wildlife conservation issues in East Africa, argues that the loss of over half of Kenya’s wildlife since the 1970’s is largely result of the country’s ban on all forms of wildlife utilization, such as trophy hunting. Kenya is the only country in east and southern Africa that totally bans hunting, thus precluding one of the most lucrative forms of wildlife-based commerce and a potentially critical source of conservation incentives in the context of rural African communities.Norton-Griffiths’s personal web site contains a wealth of information, including various published and unpublished papers with rich data on conservation in Kenya. Particularly important is his discussion of the role that foreign- mainly British and American- animal welfare organizations play in perpetuating the hunting ban in the face of local movements to re-introduce regulated wildlife utilization practices.