At war with the elephants

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GOKWE - Precious Nyoni, 35, surveys his garden. The vegetable and sugarcane stalks are flattened, and half-eaten crops lie all around. This was his only livelihood, and in one night, it is all gone.

"(Zimbabwe's) liberation struggle ended in 1980. But now we have another
war, with the elephants. We are not allowed to kill them, hence we just
frighten them, but look, where am I going to get the food to survive when
everything has been trampled by these creatures?

"They are too many and I believe they should be reduced through a culling
exercise. Just recently, elephants destroyed 50 hectares of maize crop
belonging to some villagers. It means that all of us need food assistance
even before we have harvested," Nyoni said, looking as devastated as his
garden.

More than 600km north of Gokwe, in the Omay communal lands of the Nyaminyami
district, farmers come down from a rickety treetop watchtower. They have
worked in shifts through the night, guarding their lands from being raided
by an elephant herd.

Southern African countries have been plunged into an elephant management and
ecological degradation crisis that demands urgent action.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the ivory trade decimated elephant populations in
Africa as the giant mammals were killed for their tusks. After the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna
(CITES) banned trade in ivory in 1989, depleted populations began to recover
and now they are competing in some areas with humans for food and land.

An estimated 600,000 elephants roam the African continent. Fragmented
populations are to be found in 37 range states. Zimbabwe alone has a sixth
of the total population; nearly half of these crowded into the country's
most famous sanctuary, Hwange National Park.

Regional governments believe a legal and controlled ivory trade could bring
substantial economic benefits without jeopardising the conservation of the
species, or a further loss of biodiversity.

That could include halving the jumbo population to bring them to manageable
levels through translocation or exporting live animals to countries that
need them, which is approved by CITES. Also on the table is the
controversial culling method, which Zimbabwe would like to see resume after
a hiatus of 17 years. The practice was banned under CITES.

African countries have been divided over elephant culling. Kenya and some
West African states are strongly opposed to any resumption of the ivory
business, which they believe will provide cover for an illegal trade derived
from poaching.

Namibia, Botswana and South Africa are part of the pro-culling lobby. They
want to be able to trade their significant stockpiles of ivory to fund
conservation work.

CITES denied permission on Oct. 5 to the three countries to hold a special
sale of 60 tonnes of unprocessed elephant tusks they have stockpiled since
2002, a decision that will be reviewed at the 14th Conference of Parties
(COP 14) to the Convention, to be held in The Hague, Jun. 3-15, 2007.

At the last CITES conference, held in Thailand in 2004, Kenya's proposal for
a six-year moratorium on ivory trade was withdrawn, and Namibia's proposal
for an annual export quota of two tonnes of raw ivory was rejected.

However, permission was granted for trade in elephant hides and hair goods,
as well as non-commercial trade in worked ivory, provided it was accompanied
by a valid export certificate. South Africa also gained permission for trade
in elephant hides.

Tapera Chimuti, operations director of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife
Management Authority, said the country was unlikely to ask for approval at
COP 14 to sell ivory.

"If we were to ask for approval to sell ivory today, the whole world will be
against us for political reasons, although we have the best wildlife
management practice in place in almost the whole continent," said Chimuti.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwean authorities are encouraging the participation of
local communities in elephant conservation efforts, through the Community
Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), in which
villages are part of the decision-making process, and the main beneficiaries
of revenue earned from wildlife.

Based in Harare, CAMPFIRE was initiated in 1982, after an amendment of the
Parks and Wildlife Act (1975) that granted "appropriate authority" status to
popularly elected rural district councils so that they could manage and
benefit from the sustainable utilisation of wildlife.

According to the programme's director, Charles Jonga, CAMPFIRE has succeeded
in reducing conflict between people and wildlife, and has created
opportunities for sustainable economic development in Zimbabwe's rural areas
through natural resources management. Fifty-seven of the country's 59 rural
districts participate in the programme.

"CAMPFIRE's impact on national income is at least 10 million dollars
annually. If the multiplier on tourism activities is included, CAMPFIRE is
worth 20 to 25 million dollars to Zimbabwe's economy each year," Jonga
calculated in a Sep. 26 report. - IPS