Poaching Upsets Ecological Balance
Source: The Herald (Harare)
Date: 9 November 2005
Author: Nelson Chenga
After pulling the plug off the lifeline of tens of thousands of fish at a dam in Shamva last week poachers literally got away with "murder".
For draining a water reservoir dry to catch fish in the dam, more than 20 fish poachers were given an option of paying a $150 000 admission of guilt fine or go to court.
Ironically, the fine is worth just about a kilogramme of fish that could be easily poached from yet another dam or stream.
It seems the paltry fine was the best option they all took and are now on the prowl again ready to cause more ecological damage.
While the problem of poaching has been highlighted over and over again, the Shamva case crudely exposed how casually crimes against the environment are sometimes treated to a point that penalties never really deter the practice.
This year alone, more than 150 poachers have been arrested although their real fate at the hands of the law is largely unclear.
Also recovered were over 500 snares, ivory, tonnes of fresh and dried fish and game meat.
The medium to long-term effects of poaching may appear vague but the repercussions of past poaching crimes against nature abound today.
Once upon a time forests teeming with wildlife surrounded most, if not all of Zimbabwe's communal land area.
Hunted for the pot, their skins, horns or simply because the people despised some of the animals, much of the game has since disappeared.
Forests have been decimated and some dams and natural river pools that teemed with fish are now silted.
But sometimes nature fights back, albeit in subtle ways.
One classic example of how nature sometimes effects its own form of justice, is from one corner of Zimbabwe - a common forested area bounding Mashonaland East's Mudzi, Mutoko, and Nyanga districts.
Nearly two decades ago the three districts of Mudzi, Mutoko and Nyanga on Zimbabwe's eastern border zone with Mozambique formulated a brilliant plan to turn a huge shared idle piece of territory into a massive game park.
But an equal number of years of bureaucracy, misplaced villagers' fear of wildlife attacks and crop destruction effectively condemned the project to the archives to gather dust.
However, the biggest motive behind the villagers' refusal to have the game park created was a complex hidden agenda hatched by poaching and alluvial gold panning syndicates.
In retrospect, if the idea had been implemented, the wildlife sanctuary would have been a springboard to yet another transfrontier park with neighbouring Mozambique, similar to the one already initiated between Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe - the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.
The park could have also launched the three districts into the lucrative wildlife management and environmental conservation orbit that has helped raise the living standards for many of the villagers living in wildlife zones.
Besides benefiting from trophy hunting, villagers could also have a ready source of protein through such conservation methods as culling conducted when populations of herbivores like impala grow to environmentally unsustainable levels.
The three districts missed the opportunity to achieve sustainable development for their unique territory.
An unprecedented rise in attacks on livestock by packs of hyenas is forcing many villagers bordering the shelved game park to spend sleepless nights guarding their goats, sheep and cattle.
"All our life we have known that hyenas occasionally attack and kill our livestock but this is now becoming very strange because there are just too many attacks that have occurred so far," said one villager from Mudzi's Chikwizo A Ward.
At face value there could be nothing to it because the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) or laughing hyena, is known to live comfortably well in areas of human habitation to a point that in most parts of southern Africa people associate it with witchcraft activities.
But with its prime food sources effectively slaughtered by poachers, it appears the hyena now has very little option but to turn to the villagers' livestock for survival.
While most of the wildlife the hyena depended on for survival has disappeared the animal has, however, continued to breed and grow in number to a point that it now freely roams the countryside. Villagers confirmed spotting the brownish creatures in broad daylight.
The hyena, a cunning predator, has survived years of human activity and settlement that resulted in the decimation of other animals such as lions and elephants that last wandered the area as late as the early 1960s.
Although the spotted hyena is not really an endangered species, some animal rights groups are campaigning hard to have it placed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
They are arguing that the animal has lost most of its range through undeserved persecution and trophy hunting. The hyena once inhabited parts of Asia and Europe but is now confined to southern Africa and has almost disappeared from South Africa and Swaziland.
The unprecedented rise in attacks on livestock by hyenas in the Mudzi, Mutoko and Nyanga former game corridor point to a deeply disturbed ecosystem.
By nature hyenas are scavenging predators although 95 percent of their food is hunted and eaten fresh.
Standing on short hind legs and raised front quarters the weird-looking carnivore, affectionately referred to as the "super predator" can also shatter any bone with the ease of a sledge hammer crushing a peanut.
Research shows that although a hyena can go for several days without eating it can, however, eat up to 15kg at one sitting and is not dependent on water as enough moisture is obtained from the prey.
The hyena, however, does not just feed on meat for the sake of survival. Its hunting and eating habits play a very crucial role in the ecological balance of Africa's savannah wildlife territories.
Ecologists say without the work done by hyenas the ecosystem will be severely disrupted and diseases would abound.
By scavenging the countryside for decayed carcasses hyenas prevent the spread of diseases and by munching bones to smaller particles they help return minerals to the soil.
The fearsome animal is a highly skilled hunter. It first scatters its prey to identify the weakest among the targeted herbivores.
And using the supreme law of the jungle that allows only the fittest to survive, the hyena then pounces on the weakest, which naturally means that the general health of the hunted species greatly improves as the sickly are removed over time.
And walking about the huge savannah bush countryside bounding Mudzi, Mutoko, and Nyanga and neighbouring Mozambique it is obvious that something is definitely amiss.
The area's natural cycle is definitely out of sync.
Nothing but lizards and mice occasionally break the eerie day and nighttime silence.
On very rare occasions a rabbit or a clipspringer dashes from the bushes at lightning speed and quickly disappears deep into the backwoods.
After most of the area's plains game that included kudu, impala, clipspringer and warthog were snared, trapped by nets, shot and/or speared to death for food, the silence of the bush so deafening, it is unnatural.
Evidently, the poachers left nothing for hyenas. They disappeared with everything leaving not even the hides or bones for the scavenger to chew.
Although the hyena has a powerful sense of smell and very sharp eyesight the woods are almost empty of wildlife except for the herds of cattle and goats that now graze there.
At dawn and dusk crazy baboon calls reverberate across the countryside as a last reminder of a lost wildlife sanctuary.
Although they are also hunted for meat by some of the villagers, baboons are the only other species apart from hyenas that have managed to survive poaching. Large baboon troops still freely roam the ecologically unhinged bush veld.
However, it is not only the people of Mudzi, Mutoko and Nyanga who are having a torrid time protecting their domestic animals from marauding hyenas.
Nightmarish incidents of hyena attacks are frequently reported across the countryside and setting up traps as well as poisoning the scavengers has failed to destroy them.
The hyena, a relative of the cat family, could be close to exhausting its nine lives but is still a reminder of what poaching can do to our lives and livelihoods.
He said significant quotas would ensure that the community realises huge benefits from hunting proceeds that would fuel development in various aspects.
Between 2002 and 2003, Masoka earned about US$95 000 as dividends from safari hunting operations. For the first quarter of 2004, the community earned US$60 170, which constituted 59 percent of the gross revenue paid to council for safari operations.
"This level of community dividend is higher than the 55 percent minimum payment prescribed in the 2002 Campfire Revenue Guidelines, that were part of the association's constitution in 2003 as a measure of increasing income to the communities and to serve as a mechanism of greater accountability and transparency."
He said Guruve council is obliged to ensure that producer communities are the principal beneficiaries of wildlife and other natural resources.
In 1989 household dividends for Masoka were merely US$10, but this represented an increase of 56 percent on household income from cotton, the most common land use option in the area.
However, from 1996 Masoka community dispensed with the method of exclusively distributing Campfire income as individual cash dividends, opting for essential infrastructure development and establishment of income generating projects through collective decision-making. As a result, they now enjoy the right to manage, sell, and benefit from wildlife.
"Successful hunts are undertaken when we provide information about the most likely location of good trophy animals. We have experience in developing the wildlife harvest quota each year," said Masoka resident Mr Shepherd Chaukwa.
One of the biggest lessons from Dande is that pro-poor conservation can be advanced through innovative experiences of such communities as long as the objective is to address the management of Zimbabwe's natural resources.