Game ranchers have grown used to criticism from livestock farmers who accuse them of harbouring predators, politicians who say keeping wildlife is elitist and unproductive, and conservation purists who want to tell them which species they may farm with.
In the first half of the 20th century, agricultural and game departments believed that for modern agriculture to prosper, Africa's game should be exterminated to make way for livestock. It took two Fulbright scholars from the US to change this, according to a 2008 paper, ‘Wilding the farm or farming the wild? The evolution of scientific game ranching in South Africa from the 1960s to the present', by Prof Jane Carruthers, then of the University of South Africa.
Raymond Dasmann had been studying the Redwood forests of California, and Archie Mossman had been working on wildlife problems
