Create community conservancies for sustainable wildlife management

Zimbabwe is among countries in Sub-Saharan Africa which is deeply troubled by rampant cases of poaching, human-wildlife conflict and existential threats of other endangered species in wildlife management.

In 2013, a dark cloud engulfed Zimbabwe’s wildlife management history after over 100 elephants were poisoned in the country’s premier game reserve, the Hwange National Park.

This has been followed by sporadic cases of the use of poison in poaching in the country.

Statistics released by Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) revealed that 59 people were arrested for poaching, and of those 59 poachers nine appeared in court and were sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 alone.

The use of lethal poison such as sodium cyanide solution and paraquat in poaching has not only affected elephants but also other animals in game reserves as well as people living in surrounding communities.

Besides poaching, human-wildlife conflict is another problem where our communities living adjacent to parks and protected areas continue to lose their lives, livestock and crops to wild animals

Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association (ZELA) cited, inter alia, poor built kraals for cattle and goats, poor siting of buffer strings, grazing near wildlife conservancies, lack of buffer zones between communities and conservancies as some of the nuances which communities do to escalate human-wildlife conflict.

Last year, 40 people were killed by wild animals from January to October, according to ZimParks attributed to the growing number of animal and human population.

ZimParks further noted that since 2016 Zimbabwe recorded a 200% increase in people killed by wild animals, where elephants accounted for 50% of the casualties, crocodiles (40%)  lions and buffaloes (10%),  a situation which clearly shows a need for urgent intervention of a new model for sustainable wildlife management systems in the country.

The bigger environmental epistemological question is how best Zimbabwe can deal with all those mentioned problems in its quest for a sustainable wildlife management?

The best solution to all these wildlife and environmental challenges is the creation of Community Conservancies in areas adjacent to wildlife and protected areas from Zambezi to Limpopo.

All along the major problem in our environmental development agendas is lack of strong community participation.

The moment communities are involved in any project, it will inculcate the spirit of ownership and community entitlement in wildlife management.

The rebuttable presumption I got after interactions with people in Binga is that they thought that wildlife management is the sole duty of ZimParks.

Such a mind-set can be attributed to the fact that people feel that they are not seen as an important factor in the equation of wildlife management.

The classic community conservancies can be drawn from the two models which I will extensively touch on in this article.

These two are Namibia Wildlife Community Conservancies and the Kavango Zambezi (KAZA) Sustainable Wildlife Management programme currently implemented in Binga district of Matabeleland North Province and it’s funded by the European Union.

The Sustainable Wildlife Management in Zambia and Zimbabwe (KAZA Project) is a community based sustainable wildlife Management in Southern Africa tailor made to recognise fundamental rights of local people to manage and benefit from their resources while conserving their resources at the same time.

Under the Sustainable Wildlife Management programme, an interesting model of Community Conservancy which Zimbabwe needs to replicate in all districts is the Mucheni Community Conservancy of Binga District, which is building on the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) which was successfully implanted in Zimbabwe.

The Mucheni Community Conservancy model is made in such a way that people in the community are trained on how to conserve their own environment. Like rangers of ZimParks, the Mucheni community trained its own Natural Resource Monitors.

These natural resource monitors are dwellers of the community who will be patrolling to make sure that there are no activities which are detrimental to the environment such as poaching and Human-Wildlife Conflict.

If the whole country replicates such a model, capacitates our people and creates Natural Resource Monitors, it will be easy for Zimbabwe to fight rampant cases of poaching and Human-Wildlife Conflict ravaging communities near national parks and protected areas.

Timothy Mdenda who is Chief Siansengwe of Binga District where the Mucheni Conservancy lies said, “We are saying is if the efforts of coming with this conservancy come into fruition, as a community we must have control and autonomy of the day to day running of this conservancy. For example if  we want meat as a community we sit down and agree so that we can get meat in a sustainable manner rather than creating a situation where these hunters will deplete our resources. What we want to see is the proceeds of this conservancy benefiting our community by upgrading schools and other rural infrastructures, unlike creating a situation where communities with rich wildlife like here in Binga fail to realise the proceeds of their natural endowments”.

My recent discussion with Sustainable Wildlife Management Kaza Site Coordinator, for Zambia and Zimbabwe Patrice Grimaud, in Binga has shown that Mucheni Conservancy which is adjacent to Chizarira National Park has everything in place and what is now left is to be given a legal status.
“This Sustainable Wildlife Management Projected has been implemented for four years in Zimbabwe, we spent a lot of time to sensitise the Binga community and to train them, so far we trained Natural Resource Monitors, and everything is now almost in place. I suppose that we are now ready to create and legally recognise this community Conservancy (Mucheni Community Conservancy),” said Grimaud.

The second classical community conservancy model which Zimbabwe should emulate is the Namibian Communal Conservancies.

In Namibia, communal conservancies are community-based wildlife management institutions that have obtained conditional rights to use the wildlife occurring within a self-defined area.

These conservancies are self-governed, autonomous and democratic entities which are being managed by local committees that are elected by their members.

To create a conservancy in Namibia, an elected committee must comply with statutory requirements contemplated by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in the 1996 amendment of the 1975 Nature Conservation Ordinance.

The Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism requires, inter alia, verifiable list of community members, constitution which outlines governance rules agreed by the community, a map of the area to be managed as their conservancy, benefit distribution plan, game management plan and rules regarding community meetings, committee elections and financial management.

What is very fundamental in the Namibian scenario is that the policy objective for creation of communal conservancies was to allow rural communities on state land to undertake tourism ventures and to enter into cooperative agreements with commercial tourism organisations to develop tourism activities on state land, which Zimbabwe can take a leaf from.

As per Namibian statutory regulations once the community comply with legal requirements, the Minister will then declare the new conservancy in the Government Gazette.

However, although the Ministry of Environment and Tourism is not obliged to govern conservancies, it has power and discretion to de-register any conservancy which is not compliant with conservation regulations.

The Namibian government has gazetted over 80 conservancies.

Just like Namibia, Zimbabwe should create community conservancies, where local communities can have independent control of their wildlife, elect their own office bearers of the conservancies, create their own constitutions which govern them and determine how best they can benefit from their wildlife.

The majority of communities who are victims to poaching and human-wildlife conflict do not see the importance of living in harmony with wildlife because they are not benefiting from the proceeds of wildlife.

What we want to see is a situation where people near protected areas and national parks benefit from tourism and hunting quotas.

We want to see these community conservancies entering in joint ventures with tour operators, hunting operators and hospitality providers thereby creating jobs and economic activities for our remote communal areas living with wildlife.

As long as communities realise the advantage of community conservancies, we will witness communal communities volunteer to protect and monitor wildlife resources which will subsequently incentivise them to report any incident of poaching and human-wildlife conflicts.

Zororai Nkomo is a Zimbabwean journalist, lawyer and environmental justice activist. He writes in his own personal capacity. He can be contacted on zoronkomo@gmail.com.