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Walter Mswazie, Masvingo Correspondent
HYENAS are terrorising people and eating livestock in some parts of Chivi District in Masvingo province.

Chief Nemauzhe said some villagers have been attacked and others have lost their livestock to the animals.

“I have received numerous reports of hyenas which normally move in numbers, say five to eight. In previous years, I was getting reports of stray lions eating people’s cattle, but now its hyenas attacking and eating goats. We are presently engaging ZimParks,” said Chief Nemauzhe.

Mr Trust Chitave of Musvovi Village said the hyenas are mostly spotted at night targeting especially goats.

He said sometimes the hyenas attack people.

“Sleeping away from your homestead makes one run the risk of losing one’s goats as there are marauding hyenas in our area. Since the beginning of this month, eight villagers have lost their goats-one each,” said Mr Chitave.

ZimParks Public Relations Manager Mr Tinashe Farawo said the authority has received reports of human and wildlife conflicts in Masvingo and other provinces.

He said in most cases they have captured the animals and sent them back into conservancies.

“In situations where we receive such reports we normally capture the stray animals back into conservancies. In rare circumstances when the animals would have killed livestock we kill to eliminate the animals but we try by all means to conserve our animals as we do not want to destroy wildlife so that our future generations can be able to see the animals species we have,” said Mr Farawo.

He said the challenge the authority is facing is that some of the animals live in open forests where there are no perimeter fences and from time to time they stray into homesteads for different reasons.

“About 26 percent of our wildlife live in open forests. We are, however, encouraging communities to report cases of stray wild animals so that we take corrective action early,” he said.

@walterbmswazie3