Zambia is a country of abundant natural resources, healthy and increasing wildlife, and beautiful ecosystems. As a member of Parliament and minister of tourism, I oversee the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, which conserves wildlife and habitat. Our department administers national parks and game management areas. These GMAs are home to diverse populations of wildlife that live alongside rural communities.
Zambia’s first and foremost goal is sustainable development and poverty reduction. We do this through diversified conservation strategies. These include regulated hunting of a limited number of animals in the GMAs (an area almost three times as large as our parks). This hunting helps to manage our species and, most of all, it generates revenues that fund habitat protection, species management, anti-poaching, and employment and social services for our communities. Hunting also generates fresh game meat for these communities.
Zambia has species-based National Management Plans that ensure that our iconic species are conserved for the benefit of future generations. Our hunting program is based on scientific surveys and stringent national regulations, including age-based protocols for the harvest of lions and leopards. Harvest and exports are also regulated under our national Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora program. These rely upon international quotas, permitting and oversight from the Convention of 185 Parties. Under this system, Zambia has maintained stable or increasing populations of elephant, lion, leopard, and more. As the minister of tourism, I can attest to the success of our wildlife management.
Despite our record of conservation success and science-based management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has for years adopted regulations making it more difficult to import animals from Zambia and other African countries into the United States. These regulations require “enhancement,” which we routinely demonstrate. Sustainable use of wildlife, including regulated hunting, helps to conserve habitat, combat poaching, and improve rural community livelihoods in Zambia. We have shown evidence of these benefits. Yet, the service has raised the bar, requiring more evidence or more “enhancement.” And each time, the value of our wildlife declines with U.S. hunters.
These regulations, presumably adopted in good faith, nevertheless ignore science and disrespect our national sovereignty and the rights of our rural people to develop sustainably. Therefore, I strongly support efforts in the United States Congress to amend the U.S. Endangered Species Act and remove these harmful regulations. The amendments recognize the success of Zambia and other southern African countries instead of continuing to penalize us because we support regulated hunting (and, in turn, maintain the world’s largest populations of elephant, lion, leopard, hippo and more).
Unfortunately, anti-hunters and animal rights groups have repeatedly attempted to use the ESA, as it exists, as a cudgel that can deprive governments and communities in African range states of critical tourism revenue and the ability to manage their wildlife. These groups, often based far from the landscapes they claim to protect and steeped in an animal rights Western ideology at the expense of rural people, push for blanket bans and import restrictions that undermine proven, science-based management strategies. Their activism disregards the voices and rights of local communities who live alongside wildlife and depend on sustainable-use hunting for their livelihoods.
As I understand it, the ESA was adopted with the goal of supporting conservation programs, including facilitating the import of species from well-managed foreign hunting programs. It is about time the U.S. Congress returns to that goal. I ask lawmakers to look at the concrete results we have been able to achieve and the views of our rural communities that benefit from regulated hunting.
I invite you to observe Zambia’s effective management and take a position that aligns with science, equity and comity. Thus, I ask the U.S. Congress to pass the ESA Amendments Act of 2025 for the benefit of Zambia’s rural people and wildlife.