The ethical hunter in Africa: big game hunters make a claim for conservation.

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To 62-year-old David Peterson, who lives in a hand-built mountainside cabin in Colorado and writes books about ethical hunting, the notion is simple: "If you're killing something and not eating it, you have no moral standing."

Peterson, the author of Elkheart (Johnson Books) and On the Wild Edge (Henry Holt & Co.) shoots only with a bow and arrow, considers hunting a spiritual pursuit and spends what time he is not walking the woods working to save public lands. To him, hunting has nothing to do with ego, or trophies, or record books--the bragging rights that are the cornerstone of the typical African hunting safari.

Safari Club International, the worldwide club that dubs itself "the leader in protecting your freedom to hunt," keeps an eight-volume set of trophy animal records from big game hunts and gives out yearly awards at a lavish banquet. But many of these hunts take place in enclosed areas--some as small as 2,000 acres according to Montana hunter and author Don Thomas--leading to serious questions about ethics and conservation priorities.

Thomas says he has hunted in Africa 13 times, mostly in Southern African countries like Zimbabwe and Zambia. He, too, hunts exclusively with a bow and arrow. Culturally; Thomas says the issue of enclosures in Africa is a difficult one. In the U.S., he has campaigned against "canned" hunting; but, in Africa, with its unstable political climate and widespread hunger, he says "wildlife uncontrolled ends up dead." What's more, some of these enclosures are massive--200,000 acres--and easily bypassed by animals like warthogs, dikers and orbis. Andrew Page, the director of the Humane Society of the United States' (HSUS) Wildlife Abuse Campaign, says the enclosure's size doesn't matter. "These 'guides' are really ranch hands," Page says. "They know all the haunts and where the animals water and feed. It's a sham."

Hunting advocates argue that licenses and permits provide lucrative financial support to African wildlife reserves, living wages to locals working as trackers, cooks and guides and a ready supply of meat to tribal people. Thomas says a typical 30-day East African hunt would cost $50,000, plus additional trophy fees that can run up to thousands of dollars per animal. At a place like the Humani Reserve in Zimbabwe, free-roaming animals include rare black rhinos, lions, leopards, elephants and buffalo (a.k.a., "the Big Five") and a dizzying array of other species. "You can drop $100,000 very easily," he says.

But Page says tourists armed with cameras and binoculars spend plenty of money, too. He's watched that very transformation happen in the U.S. "Since the 1970s, hunting has been on a steady decline," Page says. "Wildlife watching is increasing ... and generates almost twice to the general economy what hunting does."

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Stefanie Powers, the actress best known for her leading role on the '80s TV crime drama Hart to Hart, spends half her time in Kenya working as president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, which she co-founded. Actor William Holden, who died in 1981, was an ardent conservationist and hunter and Powers doesn't see the two terms as mutually exclusive. "But I'm talking about responsible hunting" she says, "not a bunch of guys with a six-pack of beer." Powers' main focus is on education--giving locals what she calls a "relevant" education focused on biodiversity and alternatives to habitat destruction. The foundation's education center serves 11,000 students and is a model of environmental sustainability, reusing graywater, using biogas and recycling everything, down to the fecal matter.

It is "bush meat"--the illegal hunting and trading of meat from wild animals-combined with the easy access offered by loggers that is having the most devastating impact on fragile wildlife populations, according to Powers. Livestock farmers can't supply enough beef to meet demands, and sell wild animal meat instead, at great environmental and human health cost. In Kenya, hunting has been banned for more than 20 years, but as many as one million animals like buffalos and gazelles are being killed for bush meat each year, the Kenya Wildlife Service has reported.

CONTACTS: Humani Reserve, http://rwsafaris.net/humani.htm; Humane Society of the United States, www.hsus.org; William Holden Wildlife Foundation, [phone], www.whwf.org.