The announced fee increase quintuples the fee some operators have to pay for each of their concessions (increasing it from $10,000 to $50,000) and quadruples it for others ($10,000 to $40,000). It also dramatically increases trophy fees for flagship species such as elephant ($5,000 to $15,000), lion ($2,500 to $12,000) and leopard ($2,500 to $12,000). Other trophy fees go up, too, but not as much.
The big question, as this issue goes to press, is whether the fees, in whole or part, will be enacted this year, or delayed until next year. If they are enacted, the follow-up questions are: 1.) How are operators going to be able to pay huge new concession fees they did not budget for when they sold 2007 safaris; and 2.) How are hunters going to react to huge new trophy fees they also did not budget for when they booked their safaris?
All of this will have been decided by the time you read this, so I will not elaborate on all of the maneuvering that is taking place at press time. Suffice it to say, we were assured at press time that the fee increases would be delayed until 2008 and the 2007 season would progress normally. We issued an E-Mail Extra bulletin to that effect on July 18. You can find out what has happened since then by going to our web site (www.huntingreport.com), where we post all our E-Mail Extra Bulletins 24 hours after we send them to subscribers who have upgraded to E-Mail Extra.
Assuming there has not been a melt-down in Tanzania, what does this near-miss portend for........(continued)
