Sunday 7 December 2014

Namibia: new opportunities for communal hunters

Eagle Rock Hunting Academy is providing essential training for nine previously disadvantaged Namibians to become hunting operators and benefit from this lucrative business.
Hunting in communal conservancies across Namibia is mainly the domain of white Namibians. This is about to change after WWF, Namibia Professional Hunting Association (NAPHA) and the Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) agreed with the Eagle Rock Hunting Academy to train communal conservancy trophy hunters.  The Eagle Rock Hunting Academy is owned by Volker Grellmann, a well-known Namibian professional hunter Volker Grellmann.

The five-day course at Eagle Rock, located in vicinity of Windhoek near Daan Viljoen National Park, conducted by Grellmann concluded on 04 December this year.

Eagle Rock has provided professional training of trophy hunters for the past 40 years and 284 indigenous Namibians have benefited from its courses since 2001. All nine trainees are from the communal conservancies of Seisfontein, Puros, Tsiseb and Torra in the northwest region of Kunene. Three among them are women.

According to Kai-Uwe Denke, the president of NAPHA, communal conservancy program initiated by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism is one of the flagships of Namibian conservation. He reiterated that one of the big success stories of Namibia – the communal conservancies – are located in often the most spectacular parts of this country with its truly spectacular wide open spaces where some of our big game occurs.

Eagle Rock course will prepare participants to successfully run their own hunting operations based on good business ethics and ensure they operate within the Nambian law. Rules and regulations regarding hunting in communal conservancies such as the option to hunt so-called problem animals and restrictions on the hunting of collared animals are part of the course. It also looked at the distribution of trophy meat.

Namibian trophy-hunting season runs from February to November and that the nature conservation ordinance strictly prohibits hunting outside of this period as well as at night and hunting from moving vehicles.

Scores of communal conservancies scattered around the country are required by law to elect representative board of directors to manage natural resources as well as equitably distribute the income derived from tourism such as photography safaris and from hunting.

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