'Milking the Rhino' shows true nature of wildlife conservation

[Comment Below]

By Charles Nunmaker

Many people watch channels like Animal Planet and other wildlife shows on a daily basis. These programs show animals in nature, but leave out one key feature: the people who live in the places that are being filmed.

Milking the Rhino is a film that explores the new reality between wildlife and people. This film is nothing like Animal Planet or any other wildlife TV shows that you have seen before. Instead, it shows the ongoing change in African wildlife cultures.

Milking the Rhino circulates around the Maasai tribe of Kenya and the Himba tribe in Namibia. Together, these two tribes experience a time of great change, as the local areas emerge out of a time of "white man conservation," a time when animals were controlled inside a specific conservation. Instead, these people are now coming into what is being called community-based conservation.

"What I came to understand is that the history of conservation is a history of making it difficult for rural Africans to survive on their land because conservation has taken away their access to wildlife, has kicked them off of their traditional lands, and has done all that in the name of wildlife conservation," said David E. Simpson, the award-winning director of the film. "In the last twenty or thirty years the tide has been shifting radically, unknown to American audiences, heading towards community involvement and that takes many different forms."

"The reason, basically, is that the conservation world has finally come around to figuring out that if there is any future for wild animals, the local people have to some stake in it and have to have some control," he added. "Otherwise, wildlife is just doomed because of population pressures. Community-based conservation is about giving the people who live with wildlife everyday some control over the animals and some benefits from living with animals to outweigh the costs that they always had to deal with because there are all kinds of costs from living with wildlife."

According to Simpson, with the arrival of community-based conservation, the rules have changed for African people. Before, specific wildlife conservations prohibited black African residents from shooting animals, saving that right only for the white safari vacationers who visit the area. Now, tribes like those in Kenya and Namibia are allowed to hunt and can use the local wildlife for essential things like food and milk.

Simpson and his crew spent a great deal of time filming the people and their way of living with the local wildlife. But, as Simpson says, it was not always so easy.

"I think wherever you go, even to the most remote places on earth, there has usually been some other film crews there before," said Simpson. "In most cases, these people tend to be exploited and not treated particularly well by the other film crews."

"Every film that you have ever seen about wildlife in Africa was always told from the perspective of the great white conservationist," he added. "The local, rural people, if they're depicted at all, are portrayed as the bad guys, and we were there to tell the story from the opposite perspective. From the perspective of those people that have to live with wildlife everyday and suffer the consequences and the costs of living with it. So when they sort of came to understand that, I think [the tribes] opened up really well."

Milking the Rhino is being shown tonight, Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Manship Theatre as part of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers. The film has been shown and has won awards at countless other locations and film festivals, including the Honolulu International Film Festival and the International Documentary Fest Amsterdam. Director David E. Simpson will also be in attendance for the screening.

Originally Published: Issue 822 - November 4, 2009

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