ZIMBABWE - Destruction of wildlife, the environment and sensitive eco-systems

The African Wild Dog, lycaon pictus, has been eliminated from most of their former range and today only three viable breeding populations are left in the wild. Altogether there are thought to be less than 5,000 individuals living mainly in South Africa's Kruger Park, Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve, and in Northern Botswana. Zimbabwe had been slowly building up their populations in the conservancies and are thought to have about 250 individuals (accounting for 7% of the world total), but now this indiscriminate poaching is threatening their future in Zimbabwe. Alistair Pole has been studying wild dogs in the southeast lowveld and says, 'Wild dogs are highly susceptible to snaring due to their wide ranging movements and the fact that they follow game trails where most snaring occurs. As the alpha (dominant dogs) often lead the pack it is often these dogs that get caught in the snare. The implications of this can be significant for the pack. When an alpha dog is killed it will certainly throw the pack into disarray and could even result in the disbanding of the pack.

So far Save are aware of at least 6 dogs that have died in snares. 'I personally removed a snare from a female that had actually bitten off the lower half of her rear leg and still continued to drag the snare around,' reports Connear. In one case a dog with a radio collar was killed and the war veterans demanded a ransom for the collar. For Alistair Pole the situation on the conservancies is a threat to the future of this endangered species: 'The biggest problem facing wild dog conservation in Africa is space. As space and prey species are reduced by encroachment of occupiers, so the population will decrease. They also become more susceptible to stochastic events such as outbreaks of disease or the snaring of an alpha dog and the potential pack breakdown. As the occupiers become more settled and numerous, as they are doing within Save Valley Conservancy, so these problems will be compounded. There is therefore a very real threat to the viability and existence of the wild dog population in the lowveld.

On Bubiana, 200 animals have been recovered from the snares out of an estimated 30,000 killed in the past 18 months. Most of the animals found have died from starvation, thirst, infected wounds, or strangulation. Many have had only their limbs cut off for the poacher's pot leaving the rest of the carcass to wastefully rot. Guy Hilton-Barber, owner of the conservancy's Barberton ranch, is overwhelmed by the senselessness of the destruction he is seeing. 'Many animals have been found putrefying without any meat having been removed because poachers failed to check their snare lines.

The modus operandi of the poachers is to set a minefield of cable snares (made from the fences that surround the perimeter of the conservancies) that act by slowly strangling, and starving, their victims to death. In addition to snaring, the poachers are increasingly using dogs to run the animals down, where they are then speared or axed to death. 'On school holidays poaching is even harder to control as the kids are sent out to check the snares. It's easy for them to escape from us and we can't convict them as they're too young,' says Keith Pilz, a Manager on Bubiana. 'The saddest thing is that Bubiana, Save and Chiredzi have vast amounts of wildlife, healthy productive populations of all the species. They have the biggest concentration of game outside of the National Parks and yet they have been the hardest hit by these invasions. Zimbabwe has 410 species of birds and 386 have been sighted in Bubiana. We have the highest nesting black eagle populations. All of this will be lost if this isn't resolved.

They have the biggest concentration of game outside of the National Parks and yet they have been the hardest hit by these invasions.

Often when the game guards do catch poachers, the enforcement of penalties has been negligible. It would appear that the police are no longer able to uphold the law, and one Senior Commissioner has confessed to having his 'hands tied' due to 'orders from above'. Earlier this year, Roger Whittal, owner of Humani Ranch on the Save Conservancy, came home one afternoon to find one of his safari camps overrun by illegal settlers. In the process of skinning an impala, the group consisted of several well-known poachers who had been previously apprehended. The police informed Whittal that there was nothing they could do, that it was not his camp any more but 'theirs' (indicating the invaders). Whittal himself has been told that he will be arrested if he continues to have anti-poaching patrols on 'their' land. Since then the conservancy has been brutalised by widespread poaching including an elephant whose tusk had been removed.