Regulatory Performance of Tourist Hunting and Legal Game Meat Trade in Tanzania

Abstract

Recently, the government of Tanzania has legalized the sale of game meat under special rules namely the Wildlife Conservation (Game Meat Selling) Regulations of 2020 as an effort to curb illegal hunting. The regulations mention tourist hunting as one of the sources of commercial game meat. Other sources include resident hunting; wildlife farms/ranches/zoos; and culling, cropping, and control of problem animals. In this paper we examine the performance of tourist hunting, legal game meat in the country, and its regulatory framework from the perspectives of key stakeholders, including both public and private or non-state stakeholders. We use a variant of Likert’s methods of summated ratings and the cumulative ordinal regression model to analyse and compare the opinions of stakeholders. We found that there are still challenges, especially related to sources of wild animals. Operators of game meat facilities find it difficult to source game meat from tourist hunting companies and the latter are not willing to offer the meat to licensed operators of game meat shops. Our results support the hypothesis that authorization of the game meat trade can serve as one of the boldest conservation tools to mitigate illegal poaching if well-planned and regulated. The results of the cumulative ordinal regression model predict an improvement of 42% in the performance of regulatory framework per unit improvement in the procedures for application and registration of game meat selling facilities (p = 0.010). The paper recommends leveraging stakeholders' active engagement and strengthening cooperation between game meat value chain actors and law-enforcement authorities. An innovative participatory model for enforcing game meat sanitary and safety regulations is also recommended to avoid potential health risks to consumers. It underscores the importance of institutional capacity building, awareness creation, and adequate funding in the fight against illegal hunting and game meat trade. In order for the country to be able to achieve sustainable game meat trade in the country, the challenge of limited wild animal sources has to be addressed, possibly by supporting the establishment of privately owned wild animal farms, ranches, and zoos, this also has its own challenges that need to be addressed too.