the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

5.4.1.11 Introduction of European Trade into the Okavango Delta Region
The traditional natural resource utilisation and management systems in the
Okavango Delta region and Ngamiland District were severely affected and altered by
the arrival of Europeans and their subsequent trade expansion into the region. In the
1850s, Dr. David Livingstone arrived in the now Ngamiland district in northern
Botswana and introduced European trade into the area, of which ivory was the main
commodity. At the time, ivory was being exported via the Cape of Good Hope in
South Africa to India and Europe (Campbell, 1997). Campbell (1995) states that
during the next fifty years, after the first arrival and introduction of trade by Dr.
Livingstone in the Ngamiland district, vast numbers of wildlife were destroyed. By
1900, hunting throughout Botswana had reduced the country's vast elephant herds
of some 400 000 animals to just a few thousand. These were confined to the
protected tsetse areas of the Okavango, Chobe and Limpopo Rivers where wagons
previously could not travel (Campbell, 1997).
The commercialisation of wildlife and the resultant introduction of a monetary
economy altered the local community's attitudes and perceptions towards wildlife
resources in Ngamiland District and throughout the country as a whole. Wildlife
resources such as ivory, ostrich feathers, spotted cat skins, hippopotamus and
rhinoceros whips, giraffe and kudu remains, etc., on which communities had
previously depended for their livelihoods, under a regulated system of usufruct and
shared rights access, all took on new value (Campbell, 1997). Local chiefs began to
see profit in the commercial hunting activities of the foreigners, turning a blind eye to
the subsistence needs and values that were so important to their local communities
(Mbaiwa, 1999).
European trade in the now Ngamiland district and Botswana as a whole introduced
and spread the use of guns at an alarming rate. For example, by 1874 Chief Moremi
of the Batawana is believed to have personally owned more than 2 000 'modern'
rifles, which he issued to his tribesmen to hunt on his behalf. Another estimate
places the total number of rifles in Ngamiland at the time at 8 000. These rifles were
generally used to hunt the larger species of wildlife so that the trophies, ivory,
hippopotamus and giraffe hide, furs and ostrich feathers could be exchanged for
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