For 10 years, Galana made profits from safari hunting based on sound conservation principles. Marty’s success gives meaning to the old rancher adage, “If it pays, it stays.”

Unfortunately, Marty and the other Kenyan hunter-conservationists ultimately lost out to so-called animal “welfare” activists. In May 1977, anti-hunters succeeded in banning all “legal” hunting in Kenya. Without hunting, wildlife on Galana ceased being an asset. Hunting had provided a major source of revenue for sustainable, profitable, private conservation, but without hunting, there were no revenues and no hunters or guides in the field to police against poaching. Not surprisingly, poachers slaughtered more than 5,000 of the 6,000 elephants Marty and his partners had conserved. Perhaps more importantly, hunting provided native people with incomes and with meat, giving them incentive to be part of the conservation effort. With wildlife all but gone, the government proposed in 2013 to put 1.2 million acres of the original ranch under irrigation, a project that will not be sustainable.

FK – This article seems incomplete but makes good points. Our society has become so pathetic that it’s men lack the gumption to even kill what they eat.

Here’s the book mentioned in the article:

Galana: Elephant, Game Domestication, and Cattle on a Kenya Ranch

And the Africans seem to be doing more damage to their wildlife than the trophy hunters.

My column on this issue:

The deer and the real horror