Government remodels Campfire

Rutendo Nyeve, Sunday News Reporter

THE Government is remodelling the Communal Areas Management Programme For Indigenous Resources (Campfire) fund to give autonomy to communities living adjacent to wildlife sanctuaries to decide on what projects can be undertaken using the funds.

It has also promised to launch a human-wildlife relief fund by year-end to assist families in the event of death or injury caused by wildlife attacks. The developments are expected to make the communities appreciate wildlife and the benefits thereof which will minimise cases of human-wildlife conflict and poaching.

Campfire is a Zimbabwean community-based natural resource management programme. It is one of the first programmes to consider wildlife as renewable natural resources, while addressing the allocation of its ownership to indigenous people in and around conservation protected areas.

In an interview with Sunday News, Environment, Climate and Wildlife Minister Mangaliso Ndlovu said Government would be improving the fund in order to give autonomy in terms of decision to the affected communities.

“Campfire is a programme that was designed to make sure that communities living adjacent to wildlife areas benefit from living with our wildlife. It is a programme that we pride ourselves in because so many countries have copied and improved on our model. We have also been working on improving our model and we realised that it is very important to have our communities directly involved in deciding how these funds are used. So, the new guidelines are focused on giving the full benefit of the fund to the communities,” said Minister Ndlovu.

He said the fund would always be supervised by the local authorities because it needed a structure but it would be exclusively for use in the communities who would be deciding on what projects they want to undertake.

“Local authorities are the lowest tier of Government and close to the people, so, they will be supervising the fund and ensuring the projects decided by the communities are implemented. The moment the communities are able to link these benefits to wildlife, they will guard wildlife products jealously,” said Minister Ndlovu.

He said Government had gone a step further in setting up a human-wildlife relief fund aimed at helping families in case of tragedies emanating from wildlife attacks. 

“When you have registered the successes that we have registered in conservation where the populations are growing at the rates that they are without expansion of the land, you will encounter cases of human-wildlife conflict. It’s unfortunate that in Zimbabwe the cases seem to be on the high side where in 2022 we lost 76 lives to attacks by our wildlife. 

“This year we have lost 13 lives, of course it is positive that there is a reduction but one life lost is one too many. We want to get to a point where we are not losing lives to our wildlife. Because of the high cases the Government has taken a decision guided by the President that we establish a human-wildlife conflict fund. This fund will be looking at providing relief to families who would have either lost relatives or whose relatives might have been injured by our wildlife,” said Minister Ndlovu.

He said there would be a committee comprising Zimparks management and other critical stakeholders that would be administering the fund making sure that issues of transparency were addressed but more importantly avoiding abuse. 

“We will need technical people who will do the assessments, making sure that the deserving people benefit from the fund. So, we are working on having this fund launched. We had hoped to have it launched by August but we experienced delays. We hope to launch it by year-end,” said Minister Ndlovu.

Meanwhile, communities around the Hwange National Park continue to benefit from development programmes launched by Zimparks in partnership with IFAW.  Minister Ndlovu visited Chief Nelukoba and Chief Nekatambe’s areas on Friday to witness some of the projects where villagers under Chief Nelukoba are engaging in horticulture farming following the drilling of boreholes and installation of solar pumps and setting up of nutritional garden through the partnership. A community hall was also constructed under Chief Nekatambe’s area. @nyeve14