Game Viewing in Zimbabwe

Game Viewing in Zimbabwe

After a relatively long period during which Zimbabwe’s national parks seemed to be recovering in spite of Robert Mugabe, tourists reported gunfire in the country’s main national park this week.

And — unfortunately — it was not the gun fire of a revolution. The shots came from hunting rifles.

Hwange National Park is Zimbabwe’s most precious big game wilderness. Located in the northwest of the country, it was one of Africa’s primary game reserves throughout the last century.

You need to be cautious when researching it, though, as is true of everything today in Zimbabwe. The link above to Wikipedia is quite dated, with Hwange’s biomass considerably smaller than the library reference suggests, and its ecology far more fragile.

“…the number of animals being snared for food by local people living on the boundary of the Park has increased dramatically,” reports one of Hwange’s most dedicated tourism operators. This because of severe food shortages throughout the country.

That’s only one of three major problems facing Hwange, today.

The second serious problem with Hwange is its very design. Wildlife filmmaker, Aaron Gekoski, documented this recently in his March production, “Grey Matters“.

When Hwange was created in 1928 it was understood there was not enough water for a real wildlife park. So the government built boreholes, water wells, throughout the park and has been pumping water for the wildlife ever since.

This isn’t unique. The same is done in Namibia’s main national park, Etosha, and in a variety of national and private reserves throughout southern Africa.

It works if maintained. But the last Zimbabwe resource that the current dictator cares about is its wildlife, and the boreholes have not been maintained. Fewer than half of the original ones are operating, and as a result, the animals are dying.

But Hwange’s greatest problem, reflected this week as tourists trying to find an elephant in Hwange instead heard it being shot, is the wholesale looting of its biomass, and not just by corrupt government officials, but by private hunting companies.

Soldiers regularly harvest ruminates indiscriminately, sometimes assisting villagers for their bushmeat. While subsistence hunting elicits some understanding from me, Zimbabwe soldiers are well paid.

And without any study or regards to biology or ecology, the government of Zimbabwe is trading animals for political favors.

Last year foreign wildlife investigators confirmed that the government of Zimbabwe had exported at least four small elephants to China. The act was little more than stupid cruelty by the seller and receiver. Four young elephant removed from their families have little chance of surviving, anywhere, much less in a Chinese zoo.

There was such worldwide outrage at this act last year, that the global treaty which governs the trade in international species of which China is a signatory, CITES, banned any further such transactions between Zimbabwe and China.

China is legendary at publicly accepting such restrictions while finding ways to work around them, or to simple illegally ignore them in practice. But the attention this focused on Zim’s dwindling elephant population provoked a real local vigilance that seems ready to expose any subsequent violation.

But while internationally Zimbabwe may be restrained, internally it’s gone bonkers.

One of Zimbabwe’s most important wildlife reserves is the Save Conservancy (pronounced Sav-hey), in the far southeast of the country that was once scheduled to become a part of a trans-national wilderness withn Mozambique and South Africa wildernesses.

Land grabbing has grown from sport to routine in Zimbabwe, and Save is being eaten away as the Mugabe regime parcels it out to its cronies.

And add to this devil’s den of looters professional hunting.

In the old, good days, Zimbabwe was a preferred destination of hunters, and its wilderness was one of the best managed in the world, with hunters and non-hunters in grand alliances that did much to preserve Africa’s game.

That’s changed. This week tourists in Hwange reported hearing gunfire, and not the kind which would excite us all that the regime was under assault. These were the shots from hunting rifles.

We don’t know if the elephants shot were by hunters from the regime, or hunters from abroad.

But the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZATF), a proactive and somewhat subterranean wildlife NGO, insists that Zimbabwe professional hunters are now regularly harvesting animals technically illegally from national parks and private reserves, with the tacit approval of the Mugabe government:

Arnold Payne, Ken & Tikki Drummond, all of Impala African Safaris, have been named as the principal thieves.

Worse, ZATF says, “It is suspected that some of the hunters … are US citizens.”

The old adage, three strikes and you’re out, is dangerously close to being true in Zimbabwe’s big game wildernesses: subsistence hunting forced by food shortages, an ecological design of national parks that can’t withstand neglect, and now wholesale looting of the biomass.

Hwange and its other sister wildernesses in Zimbabwe which for so many years were the treasures of Africa now teeter on the brink of annihilation.

4 thoughts on “Game Viewing in Zimbabwe

  1. This report is ridiculous.
    – these are a rehash of unsubstantiated rumours.

    That photo is of an elephant being delivered to local communities in Tsholotsho at the end of last year’s drought with authority from Parks and Council to help hungry people in Tsholotsho – all of the other elephant that died at our end of the park last dry season rotted in the bush.

    This claim is not correct and news of Hwange should be researched and investigated properly before publishing such comments.

  2. Hi Jim

    We have just been made aware of your blog regarding the elephant crisis in Hwange and we are incredibly disappointed to read such an inaccurate account of the issue. Not only this, you have also taken one of Gemma’s images completely out of context and used it without her permission.

    Should you have contacted us prior to your posting we could have perhaps assisted you and saved everyone a lot of headache. You should also do a little more research in future – Hwange really does offer a phenomenal wildlife spectacle and is problem free for 11 months of the year – it really is one of our favorite places on the planet. If you are actually interested in learning more about the crisis in Hwange perhaps you should visit our production website http://www.ecomentaries.org/zimbabwe-elephants.html as well as the Imvelo Elephant Trust (www.imveloelephanttrust.com).

    Zimbabwe is a country full of wonderful people that are doing their utmost to turn things around – not only is your blog unsubstantiated, but it’s also negative publicity like this that continues to punish the people and hold the country back.

    Can you please confirm that you will be removing the post asap – Gemma does not consent to the use of her image and Aaron does not wish to be associated with such inaccurate nonsense.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

    Gemma and Aaron
    Ecomentaries founder

  3. To Writer of the above comment:
    FROM JIM HECK
    My sincere apologies for publishing a photo that may be yours without your permission. It was lifted from another blog with no copyright warnings. If this is truly an photo taken by one person, that person alone needs to send me a short email so stating and ask me to remove it. As I’m going into the bush now for several days I’ve replaced the original photo in good faith that this is the case. But when I return if I do not have a simple email so stating from only the person who shot the photo, then I will revert to the original… But the blog stands. I stand by the facts and analysis in the blog.

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