South Africa has come up with a novel strategy to protect and expand its already abundant wildlife herds: It wants people to eat more of the animals.
The idea may seem distasteful to many. But for the environment department tasked with making South Africa’s natural riches pay their way in the world’s most unequal country, it solves a number of problems: adding to the value of antelope that inhabit vast tracts of marginal or degraded land, increasing the incentive to preserve their habitats, and potentially bringing a revenue stream to many of the country’s poorest communities in remote rural areas.
Perhaps most important in a nation where making and going to barbecues — known locally as braais or shisa nyamas — is a national pastime, it could provide a more carbon-friendly alternative to beef both at home and via exports. Game generates less methane than cows and doesn’t require clearing forestland that serves as a natural carbon sink. It’s healthier, too.
“The health benefits of game meat bring a whole myriad of things,” said Khorommbi Matibe, chief director for biodiversity economy and sustainable use at the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE). “It’s low-cholesterol.”
Already, thousands of antelope and other so-called plains game, such as zebras, are culled every year in South Africa, where they threaten to overwhelm the ecosystems in which they live. Most of that meat is deemed unsuitable for human consumption because it isn’t processed correctly.
“We want to dedicate a lot of our effort to consumption of these antelope, which are breeding in the hundreds of thousands,” said Matibe.
Matibe’s boss, Environment Minister Barbara Creecy, this week launched an ambitious biodiversity economy strategy, of which game meat is a key plank, at a conference near Johannesburg. The DFFE plans to regulate the industry to ensure food safety and traceability, encourage the development of infrastructure such as abattoirs and promote the sale and consumption of meat both locally and abroad.
“We don’t encourage captive breeding,” Matibe said. “We are harvesting them from the wild.”
So far, there is little to fault in South Africa’s sustainable-use philosophy when it comes to conservation. An act passed in 1991 that gave farmers the right to own the animals on their land started a boom in the wildlife industry. Today, tracts of farmland have been given up to game, supporting hunting and ecotourism outfits as well as a thriving wildlife auction circuit. There are now more than 20 million large wild animals in South Africa, compared with about 500,000 in 1964. Four-fifths of them are on private land.