“CATTLE & KUDU”
In reality, farming, whether it be game, cattle or crops, needs to be run like any other business. Any unnecessary costs to your enterprise needs to be dealt with and mitigated in order to ensure the success of your operation. The conflict between wild game and domestic cattle has been going on for centuries. Whether it be predator and prey, wildlife spreading diseases such as the rinderpest or competition for grazing, domestic cattle farmers have always viewed wildlife as a hindrance or threat on their farming operation.
It took me 15 years to persuade my father to introduce game to our farm in the Free State. While I have a deep love and passion for African wildlife, my father’s passion lies in animal husbandry and the rearing of domestic cattle. My father is old school, hardworking, stubborn and cut from a cloth that we may never see again in this world.
My father's apprehension to introducing game to our farm revolved around the fact that, in reality, these animals would cost him money. While some stock farmers may tolerate migratory species such as kudu in areas like Cradock in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, these animals represent an opportunity cost to the stock farmer.
The cost to the farmer revolves around the carrying capacity of his farm and the number of large animals that can be sustainably maintained in that area. As a general rule, when it comes to stocking rates, for every kudu a farmer is carrying on his farm, he has to carry one less breeding cow. It is no secret that domestic cattle are farmed to produce calves which are then on sold at profit which is then ploughed back into the land in order to maintain the continued success of the farm. Thus, by carrying large herds of kudu, this means that less domestic cattle can be farmed for profit and, if these numbers are not monitored closely and scientifically, the farm in question will be over grazed, which can lead to irreparable harm.
Prior to 1991 farmers in South Africa had no real incentive to farm game commercially. This is because all game was declared res nullius which is a Latin and legal term meaning that the game belonged to no one. Farmers viewed game on a “use it or lose it” type basis in that if the animal was on your farm today perhaps you should hunt it because it could be off your farm tomorrow and you would no longer have a claim to it. This negatively affected game numbers as many stock farmers adopted a “tragedy of the commons” approach to game. This was because the game animals were eating the feed for their cattle and the game could not be farmed effectively for profit. Thus, rather hunt it now to remove the pressure off your veldt and, at the same time, have large quantities of meat available.
However, the promulgation of the Game Theft Act in 1991 in South Africa would change game farming forever. This Act enforced private ownership of game provided one’s farm is adequately fenced and enclosed to prevent the movement of animals from one farm to another. This requires a document known as a Certificate of Adequate Enclosure (CAE) issued by Nature Conservation. Once issued, a landowner has complete right and title to the wild animals within the CAE incentivising them to farm the game commercially and utilise the animals sustainably.
In the years that followed, an industry boomed. Private game farms currently span roughly 20 million hectares, occupying 20% of South Africa’s marginal agricultural land. Today, there are in the region of 20 million head of game on private farms compared to 5 million head of game on roughly 6 million hectares of government land. In addition to this, domestic cattle numbers are pegged in the region 14 million meaning that game numbers on private land far surplus domestic cattle herds and game in government reserves such as the Kruger National Park.
There are four economic pillars to wildlife ranching. These are: the breeding of game for sale to new ranches as well as the photographic tourism industry and then the meat market and the hunting industry for both the local and international hunters. Hunting contributed R7.3 billion to South Africa’s gross domestic product last year (2019) and produced 150 000 tons of meat for consumption in South Africa, making a massive contribution to food security in our country.
The anti-hunting movement is a massive threat to this industry. While large, luxury private game reserves such as the Kariega Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape and Thorny Bush in Limpopo may survive without hunting, the vast majority of game farmers cannot. In reality, the game farming industry is not made up of large, luxury private game reserves but rather ordinary working-class farmers such as myself and my father.
Having spent 15 years persuading my father to remove 50% of our domestic cattle herd in order to carry a reasonable number of wild game, a hunting ban would wipe out this small wildlife operation. We would have to stop the breeding of our game and slaughter what wild animals we had left. I would have to accept defeat, apologise to my father and go back to farming domestic cattle as this is the only way we could make a living.
While we are just a drop in the ocean, there are many more game farmers who would share our story. A ban on hunting would see a mass reduction in wildlife numbers in South Africa. Successful game farmers would need to turn back to domestic stock farming and wild game would need to be removed in order to ensure that sufficient feed remained on the farm to support the domestic herds.
As a consequence of the hunting ban, there would be a substantial drop in demand for the wild animals and the market would collapse. Breeding herds would be slaughtered and the meat sold to butcheries with the profit being used to restock what once was a successful game farm with domestic cattle.
The irony of this story would be that anti-hunters would single-handedly destroy what they are so desperately seeking to save. While their intentions are good, their methods are going to be catastrophic for an industry that is currently so successful in conserving our wildlife, supporting and uplifting local communities and giving back to our country in a way that very few other industries can.