Opinion: What makes you a conservation business?

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Wildlife businesses often defend their activities by pointing to jobs and revenue. Richard Vigne argues that earning money from animals does not establish a conservation benefit. Commercial activity must protect wild populations and their habitats, with benefits also reaching the communities that bear the costs of living alongside wildlife.

• “Commercial wildlife production is not conservation just because money is made from an animal,” he writes. He reprises the argument that ivory and rhino horn sales must be assessed against the risks of expanding demand and enabling illegal trade.

• The Executive Director of the School of Wildlife Conservation at the African Leadership University calls for funding that rewards communities for keeping wildlife corridors open and protecting habitat. He accepts that regulated hunting can support conservation where the benefits are proven, while separating necessary elephant population management from the case for selling ivory.

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