DEATH IN A NATIONAL PARK
The Tragic - and Needless - Deaths of Claudio and Max Chiarelli:
Conspiracy Theories and Lessons Learned
I J Larivers
(This article was originally published in issue 107 of African Hunter magazine, 2016)
At around 15.30 hours on Sunday, 13 March, the well-known and well-respected professional hunter Claudio Chiarelli, holder of Zimbabwe professional hunter’s licence number 58 (1989) and his son Max died tragically - and needlessly - in a hail of gunfire in the Mana Pools National Park. Initial reports blamed poachers, but in fact it was blue-on-blue: euphemistically-named “friendly fire”.
Claudio and Max had been performing voluntary support duties for National Parks in the area, in concert with the Zambezi Society. On that fateful afternoon, they had gone out to collect a National Parks ranger patrol that had been following poachers’ spoor, and to deploy a further two three-man patrols; six rangers were travelling with them, as was Francesco Marconati, who operated Vine Lodge in the park. This would feed a lot of grist into the omnipresent rumour mills, in and out of Zimbabwe, because
of the “Chinese connection” to Vine Lodge.
Claudio and Max’s vehicle was parked on the side of the road in the middle section of the park; unwittingly, they had stopped a mere fifteen metres from the spot where the
poachers’ spoor had crossed the road. The National Parks APU had been on spoor since around 09.00 that morning, and as they closed with the road, suddenly they heard the sound of voices.
Claudio and Max had opened the bonnet of their Land Cruiser and were standing in front of the truck; Francesco and the other rangers had deployed farther back around the Cruiser. At this time of the year, the end of the rainy season, the bush can be unbelievably thick and visibility almost at a minimum. As the rangers slowly advanced, one of them caught sight of a flash of blue, Claudio’s shirt, and assuming it to be a poacher, they opened fire. Tragically, Claudio and Max died instantly.
The rumours began flying thick and fast, and it was only
after Richard Maasdorp and Gary Layard of the Zambezi Society had visited the park and spoken with those involved that the actual facts emerged.
There were some sketchy accounts of what had happened in the media, but it was in forums and social media that a lot of the information, and some conjecture and misinformation, was distributed.
Reports that Claudio and Max had been killed by poachers were soon laid to rest. They were not involved in anti-poaching patrols, except as part of the support infrastructure that National Parks itself so desperately lacked then. But some of the posts are worth mentioning:
“That does not sound like an accident to me. What patrol will simply open fire on an unidentified vehicle and its
occupants? That even defies any shoot on sight order as that too requires the target to be identified as a poacher”,
wrote one contributor. Probably from a climate-controlled office half a world away.
The realities in Zimbabwe are very different. The thickness of the bush played an obvious role in target acquisition, but so, too, did the life-and-death stakes that poachers and rangers play for daily, and which are almost incomprehensible to someone living a cloistered first-world existence.
Poachers and traffickers of endangered species face minimum mandatory nine-year prison sentences in Zimbabwe. This means they will think absolutely nothing of ambushing and murdering park rangers. Since 2013, over a thousand game rangers have been killed while protecting protected wildlife in Africa. So yes, in many African countries there are shoot-on-sight (and please spare me the misleading and emotive “shoot-to-kill” so beloved of the tabloid hacks - there is no such thing) standard operating procedures. They have to give the anti-poaching units a fighting chance.
More enlightened - from the standpoint of legislation - countries like Zimbabwe also have laws like the Protection of Wildlife (Indemnity) Act, which indemnifies law enforcement from prosecution from such acts.
Academicians can and will carry on debating the eeew- ickiness of the so-called “coercive conservation practices” until the end of time, safe and comfortable in their first-world offices. The realities are much different.
“How can you possibly make that ‘mistake’? No poachers ever are caught standing by a white safari rigged Land Cruiser. In a lot of cases, volunteers help by deploying and picking up patrols or wherever else they can. If they are getting in the way of corrupt poaching syndicates, what better way to smoke a group of these volunteers to make them quit and get out the way?” wrote someone else.
The trouble here is that the rainy season in the Zambezi Valley is not hunting season, and even if the commentator had actually been to Africa, very few overseas hunters have seen the bush at its densest state with almost zero visibility.“
I am not buying any of it” was one succinct comment, followed by “Nor am I. I have been in contact with some friends in Zim. They all think this was a set-up.” Ah yes, the ubiquitous and adumbral “friends”. They’re everywhere.
I was starting to feel annoyed, because the Zimbabwe rumour mill was worse. “This was a hit...pure and simple” being one example, and if this sort of thing was getting onto the Internet, watch out. I felt that all these cloak-and-dagger stories were actually demeaning to Claudio and Max. It was almost as though what happened was being used for a perverse kind of entertainment.
Retired CID Detective Superintendent Charlie Haley, formerly officer commanding, forensic ballistics for the
police and respected throughout southern Africa as one of the most knowledgeable ballisticians on the continent, was also asked to inspect the bodies. Charlie’s verdict, when I asked him, was a single sentence: “I examined the bodies and all I saw tied in with the official report.” In his 22 years in the police, he has seen just about every conceivable type of shooting. He also mentioned that all of the rounds that hit the bodies appeared to have been tumbling, which to me is indicative of bullets that have been deflected by something like dense bush. It is not indicative of calculated and controlled fire.
Fortunately, saner voices were also heard. “Rather than spawning conspiracy theories this is an opportunity (albeit a very, very unfortunate circumstance) to press for more funding, training, management and everything else associated with the goal that these two men gave their lives for. Let’s hope their lives were not [lost] in vain.” And herein lies a lot of truth.
National Parks is broke. Yes, they are in a position to earn a large amount of revenue, but it’s a bit misleading, flim-flam, even, calling them a parastatal, because they are wholly owned by government. So there are often “better” uses found for the earnings they generate. The Director- General also doesn’t need his fleet of fancy SUVs, so some of their money could probably be better spent, too. But that is what it is, and Zimbabweans, having always valued their natural history heritage, have made a plan. A lot of the anti-poaching efforts these days have been, of necessity, privatised. I can’t express how much I admire this initiative. It is outstanding, and has undoubtedly saved much of the country’s wildlife. It is not uncommon for me to be asked from a number of different quarters, just who a potential donor should support. I invariably advise folks to look local first.
Bubye Valley Conservancy is one of the pioneers for the use of tracker dogs against wildlife crime in Zimbabwe, and that costs money. So does the large, well-trained anti-poaching unit they have created to protect the world’s third-largest Black Rhino population. Much of the money for that comes from sport hunting, but now that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has caved in to the Cecil-lovers’ “lion lives matter” campaign (don’t rhino lives matter, too?), much of that revenue has fallen away.
Around Kariba there are the Matusadona Anti- Poaching Project, the Bumi Hills Anti-Poaching Unit, the Tashinga Initiative and The Gache Gache Anti-Poaching unit. Elsewhere, there are the Dande Anti-Poaching Unit, Flying for Wildlife, Lower Zambezi Volunteers Group, Lower Zambezi Valley Wildlife Support Group and many, many more.
I also have a great deal of personal admiration for the work done by the late Rory Young (murdered by insurgents in Burkina Faso) and Chengeta Wildlife. So yeah, there are a lot of very deserving causes out there who are all doing magnificent work. But do you see a problem? I do. It is something that they are all working to overcome: the issue of coordination. The “standard” in the phrase “standard operating procedures” is the operative word. And this is directly relevant to the tragedy that befell Claudio and Max Chiarelli.
At the beginning of February, many of these stakeholders had an inaugural meeting in Harare to discuss how to best coordinate their efforts. The initial mailing list had over 60 names on it. (What jumped out at me, as an aside, was the fact that National Parks Intelligence and Security Section and police CID Minerals and Border Control from Harare were not included and I believe it was a huge mistake to not involve them. I’m going to say it was just an oversight.)
From such meetings and cooperation will come standard operating procedures. And a way forward. On the day Claudio and Max Chiarelli died, there were no effective radio communications. GPS devices were not in use by the patrols. There was no central command post at the park headquarters that knew, from a system of reporting lines, where everyone was. National Parks has to rely on folks like Claudio and Max and Francesco to supply a lot of its infrastructure, but more attention needs to be given to the basics: the tools they have to use. The infrastructure and the equipment. Which is where donors are needed. Perhaps the various private conservation entities will wind up working off of a repeater-based universal radio net, or maybe they will have their own structure but be able to contact other elements when necessary. I don’t know, and it really doesn’t make a lot of difference. The operators on the ground need standardised training, standardised maps, standardised radio procedures, &c.
Some stakeholders expressed the fear that because of this incident, National Parks would move to curtail the involvement of the private sector in the fight against poaching. I don’t believe they can, because they lack the resources to carry on without civilian input. And, it would be a very silly move from a PR standpoint, because they would only be fueling the rumours that the crime syndicates behind the poaching are trying to muscle out independent anti-poaching initiatives.
There is no point in vilifying an over-worked, under- paid Parks ranger for what I sincerely believe was an honest mistake made in a high-stress situation, but there is a point in learning from that, going forward, and honouring Claudio and Max by doing everything possible to get the job they were so passionate about done without something like that happening again. It can be done.
Of all the folks who have asked from time to time about who to support with donations, there has not been one Cecil-loving keyboard warrior? Two Facebook sites, Justice for Cecil and Cecil the Lion Community, have over 50 000 followers. If each were to realise that his or her opinion would carry a lot more credibility if they coughed up just $1, how much could be accomplished? Not to piddle it up against a wall by building a bronze statue of Cecil at the entrance to Hwange for $30 000 as one group has suggested, but by buying radios, GPSs and investing in specialised training and paying for productive informants.
Zimbabwe professional hunter, Hannes Wessels, summed up the backdrop to that fateful day in Mana when he wrote, “Like many local safari hunters marginalised by the collapse of commercial hunting triggered in large part by the international outrage following the ‘Cecil the Lion’ debacle, Claudio was trying to help stem the ongoing slaughter in the Zambezi Valley which is motivated by the demand for meat and ivory. Claudio and Max, for no personal reward whatsoever, were doing what they could to help. It cost them their lives. Where now is the loud-mouthed anti-hunting brigade? Will the media so much as take note of the fact that these two men died trying to save animals that are under siege in a non-hunting area. For them there was never any question of personal gain; they did it because they, like most true hunters, love the animals they occasionally pursue and kill.”
Claudio and Max Chiarelli were laid to rest outside Harare on Friday 18 March at a memorial service that drew
over 600 friends and colleagues. Rest in peace.
Photos
- Max and Claudio Chiarelli
- The spot, along the main road into Mana Pools National Park, where the contact occurred.
- Claudio Chiarelli
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Claudio Chiarelli was born in Libya in 1950, an Italian colony at the time. He spent his early childhood in Tripoli with his brother, Enrico, his mother and his father. When the Gaddafi regime came to power and the independence revolution erupted, the family was forced to leave the country.
They returned to Italy, but not before Claudio had acquired vast hunting skills at a young age when he triumphantly bagged many pigeons and pesky neighbourhood cats around Tripoli.
After a stint back in Italy, the adventuring spirit overtook Claudio, and he departed for Angola to hunt elephants. True to his colourful character, he endeared himself to the local community with his generosity and sense of humour. He was thwarted once again by civil war, and on his return trip to Italy, he met his beautiful young bride-to-be in Asiago. Guilianna and Claudio fell madly in love and travelled to Kenya to start a deep-sea fishing safari business in the face of the hunting ban in Kenya. They were married in the local registry in Nairobi and entered the world of fishing and luxury lodges on the coast.
Their sense of adventure led them to Zimbabwe in 1982 when Claudio established his big game hunting business in the Charisa Safari area. It was as successful a hunting business as Zimbabwe has ever seen.
Claudio was known for his love of life, his gracious and respectful relationship with his staff and his unsurpassed conservation and hunting ethics. The couple’s greatest achievement, by far, has been their two beautiful children, Virginia and Max.
Above all, his fierce devotion to his family and his profession, combined with the positive influence he has had over the years through his willingness to teach young people the ways of the African bush, will have a profound and resounding effect on all those who knew him for a long, long time.
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