Biodiversity and Conservation 11: 1403–1416, 2002.  2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Wildlife harvesting guidelines for community-based wildlife management: a southern African perspective JOHAN T. DU TOIT Mammal Research Institute, Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa (e-mail: jtdutoit@zoology.up.ac.za; fax: 127-12-420-2534) Received 13 March 2001; accepted in revised form 8 August 2001 Key words: Community-based conservation, Savanna ecology, Sustainable use Abstract. African wildlife populations and their habitats are dwindling outside of state-protected areas due to escalating human demands on natural resources, while the effective enforcement of conservation legislation is impracticable across most of the continent. A particular conservation crisis is looming in southern Africa, where extensive wildlife areas are rapidly giving way to subsistence agropastoralism. The concept of community-based wildlife management (CBWM) has been embraced by donor agencies as a hopeful solution in areas where adequate wildlife resources persist and agricultural potential is marginal. The conservation value of CBWM depends, however, on communities having specific information to evaluate the sustainable benefits of wildlife in comparison with alternative landuse options. Furthermore, simple but scientifically sound monitoring procedures are required to ensure that the offtake from wildlife populations is kept within sustainable limits. This paper draws together key ecological issues of relevance to CBWM in southern African savannas and identifies topics requiring further attention from ecologists. The aim is to assist conservation and development agencies in providing prompt and appropriate technical support to communities in areas where opportunities for CBWM still exist but could soon be foreclosed. Introduction Exponential human population growth and the adoption of non-indigenous and unsustainable landuse practices have resulted in a land crisis in southern Africa (McCullum 1994; du Toit and Cumming 1999). This crisis is causing the emigration of people from regions in which natural resources have been depleted, and is resulting in the immigration of people into regions where natural ecosystems are still relatively intact. These regions, which had not previously been intensively settled due to the land tenure policies of previous governments, their marginal potential for dryland cropping, and / or the presence of tsetse flies ( Glossina spp.), may still support important wildlife resources. Associated with the land crisis are inevitable and intractable socio-political tensions, with current examples in Zimbabwe (e.g. Mills 2000; Michler 2001), but these heighten the urgency for conservation agencies to assist rural African people in recognizing wildlife as an asset rather than a liability. Over the past two decades it has become widely accepted that community-based natural resource management systems hold more promise for the conservation of African wildlife than a dependence on unenforceable state-legislated controls (Child