African wildlife policy: protecting wildlife herbivores on private game ranches

Abstract

In large parts of Africa, wildlife herbivores spill over onto private lands, competing with domestic livestock for forage resources. To encourage private landowners to take into account the externality benefits of wildlife, game cropping is increasingly considered as an important component of conservation policies. In this paper, we employ a bioeconomic model of a private game ranch to examine five potential government policies concerning wildlife conservation, ranging from (strict) preservation to uncontrolled exploitation. 'Intermediate' policies appear to contribute most to wildlife conservation, with costs to landowners of such policies being modest. The model outcomes support recent wildlife policy shifts in Kenya.