THE PRIVATISATION OF ANTI-POACHING
THE PRIVATISATION OF ANTI-POACHING
I J Larivers
Much has changed in the Zambezi valley since 1985 when Zimbabwe embarked on Operation Stronghold, a paramilitary operation by the then Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management under Chief Warden Glen Tatham, in cooperation with elements of the Zimbabwe National Army and Zimbabwe Republic Police to curb incursions by heavily armed poachers who crossed the Zambezi to poach primarily rhinoceros. In the first two years Operation Stronghold accounted for 29 poachers killed in contacts, 22 captured, and an undetermined number wounded. There is no question that Stronghold turned a tide which would otherwise have driven Diceros bicornis to extinction throughout most of Zimbabwe. As population figures would later show, it was probably already too late to save most of them.
Following on, in 1992, Matusadona National Park, bordering on Kariba’s vast Eastern Basin, became one of the original Intensive Protection Zones for the black rhinoceros. Matusadona, a 1,400 km2 expanse of rugged terrain bounded on the south by the Omay communal area, on the north by Lake Kariba, on the east by the Sanyati River and its gorge, and on the west by the Ume River was made into a national park in 1975. Its three primary ecological zones comprise the lake and its grassland foreshore, the Zambezi valley floor made up of a mass of thick jesse bush and mopane woodland, and the escarpment which consists of Julbernadia and Brachystegia woodlands. It is unspoiled natural beauty at its finest.
The Intensive Protection Zones were an attempt to try and preserve the remaining black rhino by capturing as many animals as possible from the Lower Zambezi valley where they still remained at risk and move them to safer areas. Together with Matusadona the other IPZs were Sinamatella, Chipinge and Matopos.
As time passed, the rhino populations still continued to be poached, but with the burgeoning Chinese and Vietnamese footprints in Africa, the elephant were next, being slaughtered for their ivory. This was happening against the background of a deteriorating national economy, and the halcyon days of programs like Operation Stronghold had passed. It became clear that it would be more and more up to the private sector to spearhead the Rhino and Elephant Wars.
Today, the nominal responsibility for safeguarding Zimbabwe’s natural history heritage lies with the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, which has morphed from its previous incarnation as a government department. This gives the illusion of autonomy from government, which is what the powers that be know the animal rights activists overseas – with their desired cash injections – want, but in reality as the Authority is wholly government-owned it’s just prestidigitation. All the money goes to the government anyway, and is largely siphoned off for operations with a more political agenda. Bottom line? National Parks is broke. Because it has no money, the impetus for looking out for the country’s wildlife has fallen largely to the private sector. There is good news, however, because unlike in countries like Kenya where government policy is driven by the “Donate now!” brigade of high-profile first world animal rights “charities”, in Zimbabwe a lot of the initiatives are directed by local organisations.
Lake Kariba alone has seen a number of such enterprises launched in the past few years: the Matusadona Anti-Poaching Project, the Tashinga Initiative, the Gache Gache Wilderness Area Anti-Poaching Unit, the Kariba Animal Welfare Trust, the Kariba Conservation Programme and African Conservancies are probably the most active. They work concurrently with the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, and the CID Minerals and Border Control Unit of the Zimbabwe Republic Police. Other non-governmental organisations like the Zambezi Society and Flying for Wildlife cast a slightly wider net throughout the Zambezi Valley, and of course there are the conservancies in the Lowveld like Save Valley and Bubye Valley. Bubye Valley is home to a third of the world’s remaining black rhinos, and their anti-poaching infrastructure is akin to a small private military company. It has to be, or there would be no rhinos left.
The Matusadona Anti-Poaching Project has been very successful since its inception in 2013 in soliciting the support of a number of corporate sponsors, whose support is channelled through a board of trustees to administration, lake-based, and land-based operations. The very fact that community support can be had at all given Zimbabwe’s dire economic straits is both almost incomprehensible and a testament to a country that values its wildlife resources.
MAPP’s lake-based operational area extends from Sanyai East to Tashinga and the Ume River. They mount vigorous lake-borne boat patrols together with logistical support for call-signs, and work hand-in-hand with the local communities in a hearts-and-minds approach to conservation. This encompasses creating and controlling a network of confidential informants and working closely with the village chiefs and headmen to provide valuable education-extension so the locals will develop an awareness of the reasons for preserving their natural history resources. Lastly, the lake-based units provide support for the land-based operations, and vice-versa.
The land-based operational area comprises the Matusadona National Park, and the area from the Sanyati River to the Ume River, encompassing the rural villages. Roads are built and maintained to provide necessary access, anti-poaching teams are deployed, together with logistical support, and it is envisaged that an aerial reconnaissance programme will soon be in place. Again, confidential information sources are cultivated and the local hierarchy is involved to get the conservation message across and government liaison is maintained at regional and head office levels.
MAPP’s basic infrastructure and standard operating procedures are similar to those of most of the private environmental groups, and in addition to the basic infrastructural development of areas, undercover stings are mounted against illegal wildlife traffickers and armed anti-poaching patrols are carried out. This is where the government liaison is critical, because with poachers and traffickers facing minimum mandatory prison sentences of nine years for offences involving specially protected species like rhinos, elephants and pangolins they literally have nothing to lose from initiating a lethal firefight. Poachers often operate in squad-sized elements and are armed with automatic weapon systems; they like as not may be serving members of the security forces, with specialised combat training, so it’s no joke.
I say SOPs are similar, but there is still the need for a lot more coordination. In February of 2016, some of the stakeholders got together in Harare to discuss just that. There were over sixty people on the mailing list. The need for better coordination between NGOs and National Parks was graphically demonstrated a couple of months later when the well-known and respected professional hunter Claudio Chiarelli and his son Max were killed in a friendly fire incident with National Parks rangers in Mana Pools National Park.
At the end of the day, you need meaningful deterrent sentences like nine years, and you have to accept that this raises the stakes to the next level; at the same time out of economic necessity you have the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker from the private sector doing a job that in a perfect world would be carried out by law enforcement and military personnel. Because of this paradox, Claudio and Max’s deaths glaringly point out the need for better training, synched standard operating procedures and communications, and coordination of efforts.
Denizens of the Internet lost no time in waxing lyrical about the fate(s) that should befall the rangers who opened fire killing Claudio and Max Chiarelli, but since few if any of them had probably been boots-on-the-ground under similar circumstances they fail to appreciate how easy it can be for over-worked and under-paid operators to make that kind of mistake under the stress levels they experience daily. Rather concentrate on lessons learned and move forward.
In another instance, a little earlier in the year, a combined National Parks Investigations and CID team from Harare deployed to Nemangwe village in the Zambezi Valley accompanied by a would-be rhino horn and ivory trafficker, who had produced WhatsApp photos of both ivory and horn sent from his brother who was on the ground in the area. By midnight, a “very smelly” (read fake) rhino horn had been recovered from a hiding place in the bush but the sellers wouldn’t even show it until they had seen the money. The premise had been that for safety’s sake the money would remain in the town of Gokwe, which was about 90km away. That is where the police arresting details were positioned. The two Parks and CID details who had gone to Nemangwe knew the horn was a fake and sensed a robbery attempt. It was midnight, and neither the Parks or CID vehicle back in Gokwe had the fuel to deliver the supposed money to the trap. The whole excursion, based on what was seemingly good intelligence, had been a waste of time and scarce fuel allocations. But that wasn’t the end, of the story.
Working on information from another CI altogether, a CID and Parks team out of the regional office at Chinhoyi found themselves in the same village a couple of days later together with volunteers. The traffickers this time around produced the ivory, but a gunfight ensued when the trap was sprung. Whether it was the same lot of sellers or not, the story of the buyers driving off a couple of nights before had clearly gotten around. One CID man was wounded and one of the traffickers died of gunshot wounds. Ensuing publicity highlighted “how dangerous these operations can be”, but they can be a lot more dangerous if they’re not coordinated. The Harare team wasn’t aware of the Chinhoyi team, and vice versa, because of different informants. It could just as easily have been the two undercover teams shooting at each other, because they would each have assumed the others to be the sellers. And in passing I don’t believe there should be any publicity at all, or the bare minimum, when undercover operations are involved, but of course the whole question of funding comes up again, because donors love to read about stuff like this.
I can’t express how much I admire those folks who have come forward and stepped into the breach to try and stem poaching. These initiatives are outstanding, and have undoubtedly saved much of the country’s wildlife. This private-sector involvement is also responsible for seeing the introduction of new technology, like K9 units, which government could not afford to establish. But even for the private sector a lot more funding is needed. It is worth noting that among the sixty-odd folk invited to the February stakeholders’ meeting, the majority were professional hunters.
It should come as no surprise that the safari industry pays most of the bills. That industry, and its funding is now under threat from the first world keyboard warriors of the animal rights movement. Animal rightists – in this case fronted by the British organization LionAid - wouldn’t allocate a cent to Bubye Valley, because they are a prime lion hunting destination. LionAid views the recent French and American moratoriums on the import of lion trophies as a great “victory”. But the revenue from legal, controlled, lion hunts paid for much of Bubye Valley’s rhino conservation. So what has emerged is a bizarre parody of its equally ridiculous American primogenitor: “Lion Lives Matter” if you will. And presumably, at least as far as LionAid seems to be concerned, the hell with rhino lives. So without the hunting industry – often sticking up for species they can’t even hunt, like rhinos – even the bulk of the private conservation initiatives would flounder.
So there is private sector and then there is private sector. Africa’s wildlife doesn’t need the ministrations of the big animal rights charities, but as governmental infrastructure continues to deteriorate across the continent and the activists try and exert more control over wildlife policies, it desperately needs the intervention of initiatives like MAPP and all the others out there like them.
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