Proposals to restrict the import of hunting trophies have raised concerns among conservation organisations, NGOs and governments in parts of Africa. But what are the potential consequences for the communities and conservation landscapes that depend, in part, on trophy-hunting revenue? In Namibia, part of the answer lies in what trophy hunting contributes to rural communities: where the money goes, who receives it and what it supports.
At least 20 African countries use trophy hunting to generate revenue for conservation and rural livelihoods on private, community and public lands outside national parks. Namibia offers a particularly important case through its community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programme, in which rural communities have rights to manage and benefit from wildlife on their land. Trophy hunting has become a significant source of income for these communities, supporting local conservation and rural livelihoods.
Beyond the ethical arguments against trophy hunting, the sharpest criticism is financial: that little of this revenue reaches conservation or supports rural communities living alongside wildlife. That claim has been hard to test, because few studies have traced the money from the hunter to the village.
We traced the value flows to rural economies in Namibia. We followed the money from hunters’ payments into the rural economy: where it enters, who receives it and where it leaks away. Through an investigation into the socioeconomic benefits of trophy hunting, our research quantifies the importance of trophy hunting revenue in current community conservation programmes and their vulnerability to recent momentum towards trophy import bans in global conservation policy. We then asked the stewards of these programmes, the people who live alongside the wildlife, what they would change.
To build a rounded picture, we combined audited conservancy accounts, public hunting operator data, consultations with industry stakeholders and first-hand community perspectives. Together these map the Namibian value chain and quantify where value is captured locally and where it leaks out.
Following the money
Until 1996, Namibian communities living alongside wildlife on communal land bore many of the costs of living with it but had limited rights and opportunities to benefit from it. It belonged to the state. The Nature Conservation Amendment Act of 1996 empowered communities to form self-governed conservancies with the conditional right to manage and benefit from the wildlife on their land.
Under the CBNRM programme, conservancies can sell wildlife and lease land to hunting operators, earning income from wildlife in much the same way as ecotourism does. Hunting operators, or outfitters, bundle and market the hunts as packages to clients. Big game, particularly elephant and buffalo, accounts for more than half of conservancy trophy-hunting income.
From 2012 to 2019, the average fee conservancies received for a single elephant was $15,100, set against a 14-day package price averaging $46,500: roughly a third of the hunt’s value.
That income does not sit idle. Conservancies allowing trophy hunting spent an average of $1.83-million a year, with local wages the largest item at roughly $1-million, paying staff including management and game guards.
More than $700,000 a year went directly to community benefits: infrastructure, water security, scholarships and other social development. Outfitters add to this. In an average year, 235 local guides, trackers, skinners, camp and construction workers are employed with outfitters, who pay nearly $200,000 a year in local wages. These jobs are a lifeline for extended families. Meat donated from hunts, worth more than $480,000 a year, is felt widely across communities and is often a vital source of red meat that communities can afford.
Employment is the main way communities directly take an active part in the industry, and much of it is seasonal, transient and lower-skilled. Value-adding services, from equipment and marketing to taxidermy and supplies, are provided in the private market, much of it outside the conservancy economy.
Communities are, in the economist’s term, rentiers. They are paid for the use of what they hold, in this case wildlife and land. This is not a failing, but it describes a position, one the industry’s current structure offers. Benefits, as opposed to income, account for most of the economic interaction communities have with the industry.
Three findings stand out.
First, scale: Nationally, conservancies generate $1.75-million a year from trophy hunting, an average of 64% of their income, with the rest from ecotourism and other nature-based activities. They spend 72% of their budgets in local economies.
With about 20% of Namibia’s land under community governance, hunting underpins conservation across a significant share of the country. This reaffirms earlier research on the socio-ecological importance of trophy hunting at community level and echoes a level of vulnerability to restrictive international trophy hunting policies.
Second, reach: Outfitters on communal lands earn roughly $5.5-million a year. They pay 32% of their turnover on average to conservancies for game quotas and hunting-zone leases, and a further 13% reaches communities directly through employment, community benefits and meat. Quite notably, this means that outfitters distribute roughly 45% of their revenue – around $2.5-million in an average year – to local community economies, either into the hands of communities themselves or to the conservancies that represent them.
Ecotourism in Namibia’s Zambezi region, by comparison, distributes roughly 23% of its revenue locally. Leakage is inevitable in tourism, and there’s no exemption in hunting. Roughly half of outfitter revenue is spent elsewhere on equipment, supplies, taxes and profit. By this measure, hunting retains more value locally, acknowledging that these two estimates emerge from different methods.
Third, a blind spot: What hunting clients spend in communities remains largely unmeasured. Community members earned roughly $76,000 a year throughout the country selling crafts, village tours and other goods to tourists. This official figure is likely to underestimate the actual value of local transactions.
Furthermore, available records cannot distinguish between spending by hunters and that of ecotourists. Such income is important for families in rural economies but rarely features in formal impact assessments. Services that add value to visitors have the potential to retain more of their spending locally. This remains the unmeasured edge of the value chain and an important area for continued research, particularly given the sizeable boost to economic impacts that clients could have if their relationship with communities is strengthened.
What communities told us
Interviews with 24 members of six Zambezi conservancies pointed to three barriers to a more active role in the trophy-hunting value chain and other nature-based industries: business knowledge, marketing ability and skilled labour. Together, they limit what value communities can capture directly.
Supplying food and goods to outfitters, selling crafts and cultural tours, taking higher-paid roles such as professional hunter, and negotiating stronger contract terms are common examples of local value-capture opportunities.
Community proposals were practical: build local business acumen, strengthen vocational skills, develop hunting expertise and create an environment where enterprise and local agricultural projects can grow, with conservancies, outfitters, NGOs and government all playing a part. These are consistent views that illustrate a shared desire for a more active role in the industry.
What this means for policy
The evidence is clear. For conservancies that host trophy hunting, the income generated is substantial and supports local wages, wildlife protection and community projects. These findings are particularly relevant to governments, policymakers and conservation institutions considering the future of trophy hunting. The recommendations that follow are intended to inform those decisions, rather than to pass judgement on any particular policy.
Inclusive decision-making: In considering restrictive legislation, stakeholder consultation and assessments of unintended socioeconomic impacts are vital. Importantly, supporters of the abolition of trophy hunting should establish whether substitute income sources exist at comparable scale. They should also consider lessons from previous cases in which conservation funding gaps emerged and acknowledge the consequences for landscapes and rural socio-economic development.
Plan for diversification: Trophy hunting can generate substantial and relatively reliable tourism income, but it has a unique set of political and social pressures. Being exposed to restrictive policies, trophy-import restrictions and changes in international market access, preparing for a shortfall is prudent resilience planning. Governments, NGOs and donors can support this resilience by funding enterprise development and complementary nature-based activities that diversify local income without displacing existing revenue streams.
Invest in capacity: Most of the economic interactions communities have with the industry run through their conservancy. If communities are to capture more value, the sector needs to move from a benefit-sharing model towards one that promotes active economic participation.
Government, NGOs, conservancies, outfitters and donors can help address the skills gap that communities identified through business training, apprenticeships, vocational centres and local professional hunter programmes. Improving participatory and economic equity are constructive responses to international criticism, and provide a foundation for an inclusive, resilient and community-centred wildlife economy across the region.
Close data gaps: Supporting research on client spending in communities and on household-level impacts would illuminate the unmeasured edge of the chain. Research should examine how hunting clients engage with local communities, where opportunities for direct economic exchange exist, and what incentives could encourage greater local spending. Developing mechanisms to foster client-community engagement therefore emerges as an important recommendation of this study, with potential to increase local value capture beyond the formal hunting value chain.
Read the full findings here. DM
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