What is a tourism and wildlife concession?
A concession allows a community, conservancy or privately owned tourism business to operate a business on State land. They are a legal and binding contract between the Government and the concessionaire. Types of concessions include:
- Tourism concessions that could entail the right to develop a lodge or camps within a specified area, conduct tourism services such as guided tours or the right to offer more specialised tourism activities such as adventure tourism, aerial site-seeing, kiosks or car rentals;
- Trophy hunting concessions that represent valuable hunting experiences with considerable international marketing potential; and
- Concessions that may also include harvesting of valuable plant material such as medicinal plants, thatching grass, or other plant and animal species for bio-prospecting.
Where rights over wildlife and tourism resources have been devolved to communities residing on communal land (conservancies and community forests), such community management bodies are responsible for awarding concessions over those lands.