Devolution of authority for landholders, both communal and private, to manage elephants on their land is a prerequisite for the other stages in the management plan. Co-management arrangements cannot be entered into as long as stakeholders other than the State have no rights over the species. It will be impossible to create the conditions under which the elephant range can expand without the correct suite of incentives - which includes full empowerment at the outset. The State does not have the answers as to how many elephants there should be in all the parts of the range (and there may be no right or wrong answers) and it needs the other stakeholders to help to decide this.

Many planners and bureaucrats see devolution of authority as a step-by-step process where communities are granted powers incrementally as they demonstrate the ability to manage. This is 'Catch 22' (Murphree 2000). Authority is a prerequisite for responsible management and should not be held out as the reward for it. In some cases, State authorities cannot see why the end goals of wildlife management require complete devolution. Devolution carries with it the responsibility for organisation, management, control, self-sufficiency and, above all, for developing resourcefulness. These attributes cannot be imposed. They must be developed experimentally in the local setting and, without authority, such experiments are defective. The stimulus for the development sought within this management plan will arise not from the anticipation of future entitlement but from the imperative of immediate empowerment.

Establishing Precedents

It may be feared that complete devolution of authority for elephants could have wider ramifications - establishing precedents which would affect all other large mammal species in Namibia. This need not necessarily be the case. The devolution could be clearly labelled as 'experimental' and justified by the current prominence and urgency of elephant issues. In any case, the Ministry is hoping shortly after devolving these rights to enter into co-management arrangements in different parts of the elephant range - which will probably result in stronger controls on elephant exploitation than could be implemented by the State on its own.

Specially Protected Species Category

In the 1970s and 1980s in Zimbabwe, wildlife authority was almost totally devolved to landholders except for Specially Protected Species - a legal category of wildlife where the State retains powers to control exploitation. Elephants in Namibia are in such a category. It is of