adminMsilisi Dube
The recent killing of more than 100 elephants in Hwange National Park through cyanide poisoning shocked the country and wildlife enthusiasts across the globe.The carnage in the country’s largest national park is said to be the worst single massacre in southern Africa in 25 years. The use of highly dangerous cyanide signals a new devastating technique in the rapidly growing poaching trade which requires urgent methods of curbing it. The Government, safari operators and other relevant authorities have to collaborate in fighting this evolving challenge.
While in the past poachers armed themselves with guns, and made themselves easily detectable when they fire at animals or as they carry the arms, now they move around with small quantities of cyanide and poison salt pans or water points and wait for the animals to die and then they simply chop off the tusks.
More preventive strategies such as educating communities living close to game against poaching or being used as accessories to the crime, enhancing and physical security of animal sanctuaries and economically empowering communities have to be developed and implemented to nip poaching before it happens. In tandem with preventive strategies, response mechanisms should also be put in place as well. This entails boosting the capacity of anti-poaching teams to apprehend criminals and stiffening penalties for those caught committing the crime.
It appears many people do not seem to understand the vital role elephants play in the ecosystem. Elephants are considered as keystone species in the African landscape in the sense that they maintain the balance of all other species in the community.
They pull down trees and break up thorny bushes, which help create grasslands for other animals to survive. They dig waterholes in dry riverbeds in order for other animals to get water to drink.
Above all, their tusks and skins bring in huge sums of foreign currency which can enhance the development of communities and the country at large. National parks where the jumbos live are tourist attractions as well as they are visited by thousands of tourists every year.
Educating communities to shun poaching or being used by syndicates in poaching would, however, be a huge task as old attitudes among some villagers in Tsholotsho, for example, don’t regard illegal hunting as bad.
Mr Knowledge Mudenda, a villager from Pelandaba Village in Tsholotsho said people still have the culture of hunting within them hence they see nothing wrong with killing animals willy-nilly. He said some opt for poaching due to hunger which is a chronic challenge in the arid area.
“The culture of hunting is still engraved in people. With poor harvests that befall them every year, some people view hunting as an alternative source of living,” he said.
He said that some villagers get involved in the illicit hunting activities because they feel that they do not benefit from the existence of wildlife near their areas.
It is said that some villagers kill the elephants and in turn sell their tusks for a mere $20 in order to buy food for survival in a district that is so dry that villagers don’t remember when they last harvested any food.
An employee of the Community Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (Campfire) in Ward 7 who preferred anonymity corroborated Mr Mudenda’s view saying that people are ignorant of the wider importance of animals beyond their immediate food needs.
“Our people need to be educated on the importance of these animals so that they do not rampantly kill them,” he said.
He however blamed authorities at Hwange National Park for failing to come up with measures to set up physical barriers to prevent animals scattering in adjoining villages, which set them in conflict with people.
“Elephants are now everywhere especially in Tsholotsho. Sometimes people tend to poach these animals because they raid their crops, destroying their food stores and homes. During the breeding season, aggressive male elephants rampage through villages tearing down homes and destroying crops in the process,” the Campfire employee said.
He said that because humans fear elephants and regard them as troublesome, they shoot or poison them in a bid to eliminate the “problem”. It is not the responsibility of villagers to control problem animals, but parks officials.
Zimbabwe is home to one Africa’s largest elephant herds, with half of its estimated 100 000 population said to be in Hwange National Park.
Demand for elephant tusks, which sell for around $500 each to cross-border traders, is thought to be encouraging impoverished villagers to take to illegal hunting. These tusks are resold in South Africa and abroad for up to $17 000.
Director of Campfire, Mr Charles Jonga recently told Chronicle that illegal western economic sanctions were the primary cause of the failure by his organisation to contain poaching.
He said from 1982 to around 2003, Campfire was 100 percent donor-funded, but support was withdrawn when Europe and America imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe.
“We did well from the 1980s until about 2003.The lack of progress in recent years is because we have not received any donor support. This has been a big challenge because natural resources management thrives on the notion that resources are not just natural assets but global assets as well. We used to get support from the USAID but we don’t get it anymore. We used to get support in terms of uniforms for anti-poaching teams, ammunition and so on, but there is nothing now,” he said.
Online Reporter