Human-wildlife conflict threat to food security?

Fairness Moyana
Aleck Tshuma shudders in shock at what lies before his eyes. A herd of elephants invaded his maize crop the previous night leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. For Tshuma, a resettled farmer in Lumbora, Jambezi it’s another season wasted. An imminent wildlife induced drought beckons.

“Elephants are a menace in our area, every year we are faced with shortage of food due to the destruction caused when these animals invade our fields. We have tried in vain to scare them with torches and beating drums but to no avail,” said Tshuma.

Far to the east in Mabale, Dete another villager Mike Mugande shakes his head in dismay with anger simmering in his heart as he stares at the remains of one of his livestock. This is the fifth beast he has lost to stray lions that have wreaked havoc in the area which is adjacent Hwange National Park.

“This is the nightmare we have to live with every day when our cattle go out to the grazing areas which are located in Hwange National Park or when we drive them back into the kraals, lions are always lurking in the shadows waiting to kill our livestock,” said a dejected Mugande.

He said stray lions were responsible for the dwindling number of cattle in the area resulting in low agricultural production since villagers use draught power while livelihoods are adversely affected as they also live off the animals. Albert Mwinde, a village head from Maguswini in Mabale said the area did not have enough grassland hence they were forced to herd their cattle in the adjacent Hwange National Park posing a threat to the animals which would be left unattended by the herders.

Villagers in hard-hit areas such as Jambezi, Mabale and Gwayi area have expressed concern over how wild animals such as elephants, lions and hyenas have affected their livelihoods arguing that if nothing is done to avert the conflicts food security in the district was threatened.

Boniface Masuku of Masikili area, Mabale is a youthful beneficiary of the agrarian land reform programme but he says he is yet to benefit from his piece of land following repeated invasion of his field by elephants.

“I’m one of those people who benefited from government’s land redistribution exercise however I have found surviving difficult as I’m unemployed and rely mainly on agriculture however there is nothing left when elephants visit my field,” he said while checking on his crops.

Margret Chuma of BH21 in Jambezi said she had been forced to relocate from where she previously lived due to the elephants that had rendered them poor and blamed government for doing little to safeguard them while valuing wild animals ahead of people.

“Can you imagine that I had to relocate from Ndlovu to here because of these elephants that were not giving us peace. I started fearing for my family’s lives following an incident where one of our neighbours was nearly trampled to death by the beasts. And when you try to find out what the national park is doing to help us, you find nothing. For them the elephants are more important than us human beings,” said an emotionally charged Chuma.

Chief Shana whose area covers Jambezi says his subjects have been reduced to beggars every year as the elephants continue to wreak havoc unabated on their agricultural produce.

“We are in trouble because of these animals that invade our areas and the most affected being Milonga, Lumbora and Jambezi, there is little we get from the harvest every year as a result of this. There is no food here and people are hungry though government tries to supplement through food aid or food for work,” said Chief Shana.

He blamed the Parks  and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe  for doing little to protect them from the marauding mammals.
“We have countless times sought the help of Parks to help us by chasing away the elephants however little has been done and when they react it will be too late as the elephants would have done unimaginable damage to our livelihoods,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chief Mvutu whose area covers rural Victoria Falls concurred with his counterpart saying that Ndlovu area was the most hard-hit by elephants which came from the Fuller Forestry Concession and the incidences were threatening their food security.
“There are lots of elephants coming from the national park and the forestry which ravage fields in areas along Vic Falls highway that is Ndlovu, Monde crossing into Mbizha. We are completely defenceless against these beasts though we have asked for help from the Parks to no avail. This has gravely affected our livelihoods as food security in the areas is under threat,” said Chief Mvutu.

Human-wildlife conflict refers to the interaction between wild animals and people and the resultant negative impact on people or their resources, or wild animals or their habitat. It occurs when growing human populations overlap with established wildlife territory, creating reduction of resources or loss of  life to people and/or wild animals.

The increased human-wildlife conflict is likely to affect food security and increase local community animosity to wildlife conservation. Studies have been carried out to ascertain the impact of human-wildlife conflict on household food security and income in three semi-arid villages adjacent to Hwange National Park. It was revealed that crop destruction by wildlife influenced both household food security and cash income.

In Zimbabwe, the area occupied by national parks, safari areas, recreational parks and sanctuaries (collectively called the Wildlife Estate) totals about 47,000 square kilometres or 12.5 percent of the total land area. This area is the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate and is managed by the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe which is also responsible for wildlife resources throughout the country, including commercial and communal areas.

Most of the Wildlife Estate is located in remote or rugged terrain, is hot and dry and has shallow, infertile soils of low agricultural potential. Nevertheless, population pressure is forcing settlers into these areas where they are trying to introduce and maintain the type of agricultural practices that have been developed in less fragile regions.

This migration into marginal areas creates conflicts between people and wildlife.
According to acting Hwange District Administrator,  Tapera Mugoriya, Jambezi and Mabale are the most affected in terms of wildlife conflicts with elephants accounting for most of the destruction to crops during the harvesting season. He said food aid was also concentrated in these areas because of the incidences which claim at least 4 people a year.

Mugoriya said as human population extends to wild animal habitats, the natural wildlife territory is displaced. The population density of wildlife and humans overlaps increasing their interaction thus resulting in increased physical conflict. He added that the number of elephants in the national park had increased due to number of factors among them a conservation programme introduced by government called Campfire meant to promote preservation of wildlife.

Agritex reports that human-wildlife conflicts in Matabeleland North have become a cause for concern as they are seriously affecting food security in the affected areas whose main source of livelihood is farming and livestock rearing. Communal farmers in the most affected district, Hwange produced 3,665 tonnes of maize, 2,235 tonnes sorghum and 2,315 tonnes of pearl millet in the 2010-11 farming season after utilising about 23,000 hectares of land. In the 2012-13 farming season there was a notable reduction in the crop production trends with the staple crop, maize accounting for 2,206 tonnes, sorghum 1,314 tonnes and 1,757 tonnes of pearl millet covering a combined hectarage of 12,611. The reduction was caused by increased conflict with elephants which invaded fields in search of food following the dry spells that swept across the district resulting in some animals dying of thirst among other factors such as low rainfall.

“Rising cases of human-wildlife interaction are a cause for concern as they affect the food security of the region as it leaves communities exposed to seek alternative ways of fend for their families to avoid dying from hunger as those that lose their crops to elephants or livestock to lions are not compensated,” said Mr Dumisani Nyoni the provincial Agritex officer.  He said the destruction of crops by elephants was aggravated by the local authorities’ delayed response to calls to assist in culling the stray mammals. This he said resulted in some farmers risking their lives guarding their crops by the night in an effort to scare the elephants from invading their fields with some poisoning or hunting them down.

A first attempt to enable rural communities to realize economic benefits from wildlife was Project WINDFALL (Wildlife Industries New Development for All), launched in 1978. The objective of Project WINDFALL was to reduce conflicts between human populations and wildlife and to improve attitudes toward conservation in communal areas by returning revenues from wildlife use for example, an elephant culling programme in protected areas directly to neighbouring district councils.

Project WINDFALL, however, soon manifested a number of significant problems. First, since it was based on wildlife found on state rather than communal lands, the communities were not involved in decision-making. Second, little meat found its way to the local communities and only a small proportion of the revenue generated was actually returned to the district councils as originally intended.
Third, the district councils have not necessarily passed the money they received back to the originating communities for instance those where the wildlife are actually located. Because it failed to involve community land or resources, it developed neither local participation in decision-making nor a sense of proprietorship at the local level. With these shortcomings, WINDFALL failed to forge the link between wildlife resources and economic benefit which is necessary for the continuing success of community-based wildlife development.
Aware of these problems and encouraged by the new government’s commitment to localized planning and implementation, the then Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management (now Parks and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe) developed the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (Campfire) to give full control of wildlife management to rural communities. The theory behind Campfire is that communities will invest in environmental conservation if they can exploit these resources on a sustainable basis for their own benefit.

The programme is based on creating appropriate institutions under which resources can be legitimately managed and exploited by the resident communities. Profits from the enterprise may be used for communal benefits or distributed to individual households at the discretion of the community.

A recent study conducted by WILDCRU discovered that lions feed almost exclusively on wild prey when it is seasonally abundant but in periods of wild prey shortage they switch to killing perennially abundant domestic livestock. This is a pattern mirrored in the Hwange ecosystem where it was found that lion attacks (predation) on livestock peaks in the wet season.

There are two reasons for that: firstly water is freely available in the thousands of ephemeral waterholes and wild prey disperses widely throughout the ecosystem. This makes wild prey more difficult and less predictable for lions to find. At the same time, people in surrounding communities plant their crops in the wet season.

Livestock guarding is neglected as people focus on tending their fields leaving domestic animals vulnerable to predation. Efforts to minimize the impact of human- wildlife conflicts in the area of lions are underway with Hwange Lion Research Project’s study of the behaviour of lions painting a picture of the types of measures to put in place to safeguard life both human and wildlife.

The organisation employs the services of local men to assist villagers to improve livestock protection to deter predators. The project recently embarked on an initiative to work with local communities to reduce levels of human-lion conflict. In doing so they are hoping to reduce the number of lions killed by angry herders over loss of domestic stock.

Special attention is paid to lions located close to the national park boundary which is unfenced and those in the rural community farm or areas. Early warning systems like satellite collars are set to be developed on a larger scale to monitor movements into “danger zones or areas” for the human-animal problem.

The chiefs said the Campfire programme was not benefiting intended communities and villagers continued to suffer at the hands of the animals which are protected by law hence sometime their preservation overriding human existence.

Communities affected by the conflict have called on government to put lasting measures that include erecting a fence to replace the one that was vandalized as well as to provide a monitoring mechanism.