Story by Farai Gwaze
The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZIMPARKS) is aiming to further curb fatalities from human-wildlife conflict through intensifying awareness programmes in communities living adjacent to national parks.
The cost of human-wildlife conflict continues to be a huge burden for authorities even as official figures show the number of people killed by wild animals has declined from 50 deaths recorded last year to 31 deaths this year.
Wild Management authorities are strengthening mechanisms against casualties by working with communities and private players.
“It is something very critical for the government to look at, in the sense that the first line of defence against wildlife is the communities. The government is looking at various issues to make sure that we mitigate the issues of wildlife conflict with the communities. Zimparks, on its own, has done quite a lot in terms of improving the livelihoods of communities by coming up with strategies that can mitigate the conflicts, especially between humans and crocodiles, humans and elephants, as well as buffaloes.
“We are trying to make sure if it’s elephants, we have measures like beekeeping and beehives that can protect the community from elephants and trenches, which are expensive but can also work very well in defending the crops. We are also producing chilli, which is used to ward off elephants, and with rogue elephants, at times, we take them down.
Private Public partnerships have become an important vehicle of support for conservation programmes in Zimbabwe,” said Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority Director General, Dr Fulton Mangwanya.
“The best combination is to have the government and the private sector work together as they both bring strengths. The government brings the moral and legal authority, but very often the private sector is better at reacting and innovation. It is great to see in conversation a lot of these partnerships working very successfully,” noted Wild Africa CEO, Mr Peter Knights.
Through these efforts, Zimparks and Wild Africa aim to reduce human-wildlife conflict and promote co-existence between communities and wildlife.
