Zimbabwe's Wildlife Tragedy
‘Orwellian' is the term often used to describe the illogical chaos that characterizes Zimbabwe today, but now it's spreading: the United Nations just appointed Zimbabwe's Minister of Environment Francis Nhema to to chair the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The proposal is so ridiculous it's like putting a country as infamous for its human rights abuse as Lybia in charge of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Wait a minute— the UN already did that . Perhaps Zimbabwe's Mr. Nhema can, by example, teach the rest of the world how to shrink an economy by 40% in 7 years, increase inflation to 3,700%, decrease life expectancy to from 56 years to 37, and sink 80% of the population below the poverty line.
From a conservation perspective, one of the most interesting things about Zimbabwe is that 6.5% of it's land area was once managed as private game conservancies. By 1999 these private landowners had achieved the holy grail of conservation – a business model that allowed them to achieve the twin aims of biodiversity conservation and profit. By allowing native herbivore assemblages (like giraffes, zebra and eland) to thrive on the vegetation to which they have adapted over millennia, they could have higher rates of production and profit than if the land were used for cattle ranching or arable agriculture. Alas, all good things come to an end, and in the year 2000, Zimbabwe's " grubby dictator " embarked on a program of “land redistribution” that quickly deteriorated into a free-for-all land-grab. In the process, fences on private conservancies were destroyed and turned into hundreds of thousands of snares used to kill wildlife. Within four years, well over 80% of the quarter of a million head of wild game living on private lands had been slaughtered.
After the dust settled, it was clear that Mugabe's cronies like Nhema had scored quite well in the bun-fight, often taking the best farms for themselves by ordering the police or the army to remove the inconvenient settlers who had done the dirty work of killing or forcibly evicting the previous owners. Nhema, who is now running the UN commission on Sustainable Development, stole his farm from Chris Shepherd , a man who used to cultivate 200 hectares of the land. Mr. Nhema has managed to reduce output to less than 15%.
Zimbabwe's wildlife crisis has largely gone unheard due to the overwhelming scale of the humanitarian disaster that is unfolding – it's hard to compete with headlines like “40% of the population on food aid” or “1 in 3 adults HIV positive”. And yet, a few true conservation heroes remain on the ground, keeping their heads low and pushing forward in their conservation work despite hyperinflation, lack of fuel, intimidation by state agents, deteriorating infrastructure and archaic communication systems. One group that I am involved in www.zimconservation.com highlights the efforts of these conservation heroes and documents hundreds of wildlife crimes, reporting on the actual state of the environment in Zimbabwe since the year 2000.
Even as Mugabe's cronies get elected to lead global development programs, a handful of diligent conservationists persevere. Everyone else is sitting on their hands waiting for Mugabe to die. It's not the world's most effective conservation strategy, but at least the outcome is inevitable.
Brian Gratwicke
ZimConservation Synthesis Report No. 6