Excluding communities from conservation fuels wildlife crime in Africa

In Zimbabwe, a conservation organisation working in Gonarezhou National Park shows community empowerment reduces poaching

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By Calvin Manika for Community Podium News

Communities that are not involved or consulted in the fight to curb human wildlife conflict are more likely to engage in wildlife crime, conservationists have said.

In Zimbabwe, despite calls for engagement, communities are still largely ignored by authorities.

Without compensation for human wildlife conflict and any benefit from the state run Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) involvement in communities, conservation efforts may be doomed to fail.

“Most local communities lack ownership and adequate incentives to manage wildlife sustainably, unless they are attached to a conservation or tourism contract,” said Maxwell Pedzisai, a wildlife conservationist.

In areas around the Hwange National Park, poaching is perpetrated by both locals and poachers from other areas. Pedzisai said such actions are an indicator of failing to involve the community in wildlife conservation.

“People only see the value of flora and fauna If they benefit from the proceeds of hunting, employment opportunities, and community development. Without tangible action people will be involved in wildlife crime or help the criminals in exchange for payment,” said Pedzisai.

Most communities in Zimbabwe surrounding the national parks live in abject poverty while the safari owners live in affluence.

“The inequality factor annoys locals as they feel ostracised. There is a need to take them on board and empower them to fight wildlife crime and wildlife conservation,” said Champion Nkala, an environmentalist.

Local communities play a vital role in the fight against wildlife crime. However, engaging communities to support wildlife conservation activities is often challenging and in most cases, takes a long time.

A recent visit to Gonarezhou National Park Community Podium showed the benefits of community involvement in wildlife conservation. Communal Areas Management Program For Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) is operational in Chiredzi Rural District Council (RDC).

In the Malipati community in Gonarezhou National Park, Gonarezhou Conservation Trust built community institutions that represent community voices and supports them in acquiring project management skills so they can lead project activities.

Bosman’s Camp, a safari lodge in Malipati Community, is the flagship project that aims to empower local communities and fight wildlife crime. The facility was developed as a tourism and conservation partnership between the Malipati Development trust, Gonarezhou Conservation

Trust and Chiredzi RDC for the mutual benefit of the Malipati Community and Gonarezhou National Park.

“Partnership with wildlife authorities has helped eliminate poaching which is a commendable achievement in light of the increasing threats to wildlife due to poaching and illegal wildlife trade,” said Lawrence Moyo, the Chairperson of Malipati Development Trust.

Chiredzi Rural District Council and GVT gave the community management rights to a part of the community forests. The transfer of rights to communities and equitable benefit sharing was a catalyst to eliminating poaching in Chiredzi.

Valenda Chauke (49), a villager said CAMPFIRE is helping the community through infrastructural development in the area and provision of essential facilities.

“They built for us a school block and roofed the clinic. There are many activities they are doing for us. We are being cushioned from human/wildlife conflict,” said Chauke.

CAMPFIRE is a benefit-sharing scheme that involves local communities that live in the vicinity of national game parks and suffer wildlife intrusions. The programme was instituted by the government of Zimbabwe during the mid-1980s in order to create incentives to conserve wildlife by directly transferring benefits from conservation to the local communities.

However, poaching still remains a threat to wildlife conservation in the country. Since its inception, CAMPFIRE enjoyed limited success as poaching initially subsided as beneficiaries started receiving wildlife income. In Chiredzi, through the involvement of community and benefits from CAMPFIRE, poaching has receded.

Gonarezhou is surrounded by Communal land (CAMPFIRE Areas) and private land in Gonagudzingwa and Malilangwe wildlife conservancies. Gonarezhou Conservation Trust collects data on Human Wildlife Conflict and monitors it.

According to GCT data on the latest report, elephant crop raiding incidents from 2017 to 2022 increased every year from 45 incidents in 2017 to 230 in 2022. Statistics on problem animals shows that elephants are the most problematic with 84%, 14% hippopotamus and the remaining percentage being chacma baboon, bush pig and buffalo. The data shows that farmers lost their staples from wild animals on larger scales. The breakdown of crop species raided stands at sorghum 41%, Maize 36%, Beans 9%, vegetable Gardens 5% and other crops accounting for the remaining percentage.

“Incidents are collected via SMS, phone calls, WhatsApp or face to face, it is captured in SMART mobile in the field and sent to the office via GSM network to a SMART Cloud server.

The report is then downloaded and is cleaned for analysis,” says Elce Dheimini, GCT Human Wildlife Data Coordinator.

In Hwange, institutions have failed to protect wildlife in the region because of inappropriate and poor policy designs, hence the need for more ideas to feed into future policy reforms. Experts say policies and legislation can enable or discourage community attempts to self-organise, but at the same time, if the need to manage resources sustainably arises communities may start to self-organise in order to create new institutions

“Through such an initiative in Malipati, every community member has a role in wildlife protection.

Communities must meet their social, economic, and conservation goals. This inclusive and participatory approach centres the perspectives of people who have always lived alongside wildlife, utilising indigenous knowledge to simultaneously restore ecological integrity and drive local prosperity,” said Nkala.

This article is reproduced here as part of the African Conservation Journalism Programme, funded in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe by USAID’s VukaNow: Activity. Implemented by the international conservation organization Space for Giants, it aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Written articles from the Mozambican and Angolan cohorts are translated from Portuguese. Broadcast stories remain in the original language.

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