In Zimbabwe, loyalists of wild kingdom rush to the rescue

Source: The Boston Globe

Date: 18 September 2006

Author: John Donnelly

HWANGE NATIONAL PARK, Zimbabwe -- Wildlife guide Mike Scott followed footprints of one large animal after another -- elephant, buffalo, kudu, leopard, lion -- and then stopped suddenly, sniffing the air. ``Shall we follow our noses?" he said, heading toward a powerful stench that grew more noxious by the step.

Within a minute, Scott came upon an elephant graveyard: jackal-gnawed bones of three of the giants spread in a great arc on the grass, including the remains of one baby that had died recently, its rough hide curled up. Scott figured all had perished in last year's drought and its aftermath.

While cycles of nature have always brought wide-scale death to Africa's wildlife, the acts of man have recently exacted a heavy toll in Zimbabwe.

In the past year, many animal water holes at Hwange, the crown jewel of Zimbabwe's parks system, have run dry as old pumps failed and there was no money to repair them. In the last three years, poaching has risen after park ranger salaries were reduced to almost nothing by inflation.

The country's long economic crisis, spurred in part by the government's seizure of white-owned farms starting more than six years ago, has led to an almost complete cutoff in money to Zimbabwe's national parks, among the most beautiful in southern Africa. Desperate for help at Hwange, the government in recent months has been relying on an unlikely source: a conservation society made up almost exclusively of whites.

The Friends of Hwange, using more than $1 million in donated private funds, last month finished rebuilding more than half of the park's 50 water holes, where animals drink and bathe, and paid for fuel to run the pumps and for anti-poaching patrols. In the coming months, Friends of Hwange members will visit the park frequently, becoming shadow rangers.

Around Africa, conservation groups have long played a significant role in helping to run parks systems. But in recent years, there has been nothing quite like the hasty takeover at Hwange, providing another example of the disintegration of President Robert Mugabe's government.

Mugabe, Zimbabwe's ruler since independence in 1980, ordered the forcible seizure of farms from white landowners starting in March 2000 in what many analysts saw as a strategic move to hold on to power. Whites, who made up less than 1 percent of the population, controlled 70 percent of the country's arable farmland. But the widespread farm takeovers created an economic disaster: a flight of foreign capital, plummeting agricultural production, and an annual inflation rate now hovering around 1,000 percent.

Turning to whites now strikes some Zimbabweans as bizarre.

``We live under a lunatic regime -- the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing," said Peter Mundy , who until recently was the parks service's ornithologist. ``On one hand, the government chases off all the white farmers, and on the other hand, they are trying to get some help from the whites. It's an abrogation of the government's responsibility, but they have no money."

A spokesman for the parks service, Edward Mbewe , did not return several telephone messages seeking comment, but a prominent environmentalist said the government's move benefits everyone.

``Everything has improved because of our partnership with them," said Johnny Rodrigues, chairman of Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, a private group that helped the government organize the Friends of Hwange initiative. ``The Zimbabwean government knows that managing the parks right now will never work unless they can get outside help. They know it will collapse."

The parks face multiple stresses. Tourists have become as rare as lion sightings, scared off because of the country's political crisis and scarce fuel for their vehicles. And in addition to poaching, specialists say, legal hunters have been allowed to kill an unsustainable number of big-game animals, including lions, in areas adjacent to Hwange.

Hwange, larger than the state of Connecticut, was in the early 19th century the royal hunting grounds of the Ndebele warrior-king Mzilikazi. Unlike many refurbished national parks around the continent, it lacks romantic lodgings and other amenities. Its spartan wooden cabins desperately need fresh paint and new furniture. But it does offer unspoiled settings for visitors to experience wildlife roaming freely.

``The park is still simple," said Vilma Gianini , a Swiss architect working in Zimbabwe who was on Scott's walking safari tour. ``There's no swimming pools. Just a few campsites and a few chalets. And the bush -- that's it."

The park is home to a tremendous variety of wildlife, including more than 100 species of mammals and nearly 400 species of birds. But during a four-day visit this summer, animal herds were rarely seen. Other recent tourists to Hwange had similar experiences.

``There was hardly any animals, almost no wildlife in the plains," said David Coltart, an opposition lawmaker to Mugabe's government who recently spent five days in the park. Coltart blamed an upswing in poaching and uncontrolled hunting near the park.

Hermanus ``Buck" deVries, 70, who lost his Hwange-area hunting safari business and farm in 2003 when more than 100 armed men forced him off the land, also said that unregulated hunting in the past three years had almost wiped out many of the large species.

Hunting is legal outside Hwange, but it is regulated, with each reserve given quotas for the number of animals that can be killed. During the past year, the government has banned hunting of lions in some areas after counts showed that the numbers of the big cats in Hwange had dropped from 500 in 1996 to about 100 today. But some people say that lion-hunting persists.

``You've got total breakdown of law and order here. There's no more trophies," deVries said in an interview in Bulawayo, about 150 miles south of Hwange, referring to the hunting of lions, rhinos, and buffalos. ``What hunters are shooting now is rubbish."

DeVries and others said hunters have reported paying $25,000 in recent years for the chance to legally shoot an elephant, $10,000 for a leopard, and $7,500 for a buffalo. Before the ban on lion-hunting, hunters paid $30,000 to $34,000 to shoot a lion.

On a recent afternoon, Scott, 42, the wildlife guide, was driving slowly on one of Hwange's back roads when another vehicle approached. Scott jumped out and warmly greeted the other driver, Leon Varley , 50, a longtime safari operator in southern Africa. They swapped intelligence.

``Chizarira's getting hammered" by poachers, Varley said, referring to a small park about 75 miles northeast of Hwange. ``A lot of elephants poached last year. They also caught guys moving ivory. Said it was going to the Chinese."

But both Scott and Varley believe that Hwange can rebound. After a walk in which he followed tracks to 13 bathing hippos and four black-backed jackals, and also found pearl-spotted owls and a fish eagle, Scott said that last year's drought had one major benefit -- forcing the government to seek outside help.

``You kind of need a crisis like this for people to do something," Scott said.