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Johnson Siamachira, Correspondent

WHERE others have been preaching environmental conservation, a sustainable wildlife management programme in Binga District in north western Zimbabwe has been practising it.

One of the approaches used by the programme to educate communities on human-wildlife conflict is community theatre.

Established in 2018, the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) programme has sought to create a brighter future for people and wildlife and peace between them in their conflict over scarce land.

Much of Binga District falls within the Zimbabwean agro-ecological classification of Natural Region Five — described as unsuitable for any agricultural use except extensive grazing.

With its aim to promote good natural resources utilisation, including wildlife, as an economic and sustainable land-use option, the wildlife management initiative operates on the basic philosophy of returning the management of wildlife and other natural resources to the local inhabitants.

The SWM programme is funded by the European Union and implemented by a consortium of partners including the Food and Agriculture Organisations of the United Nations (FAO), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (Cirad), the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

Cirad is implementing the initiative in Zimbabwe with the support of the Government and Binga Rural District Council.

The effort in Zimbabwe aims to encourage the establishment of community conservancies for better land-use planning and wildlife management. The initiative collaborates with traditional chiefs, local communities and Government officials to implement affordable and appropriate solutions to protect livestock and crops from wild animals.

By involving local people in the management of their wildlife and other natural resources using drama, the programme is promoting communities’ behaviour change by co-existing with wild animals. These communities are learning to have a symbiosis with wildlife and value it as an economic resource to be guarded for posterity.

The success of using drama is particularly visible in wards 3, 4 and 5 where development projects are identified with the programme. Since it started operating in the district, the SWM programme established projects to protect people, crops and livestock from predators.

Rural areas in arid marginal areas, where wildlife management makes more economic and environmental sense than crop farming, are turning to wildlife as a source of income.

To help local people understand better the value of wildlife, the SWM programme works with a theatre group, Intembawuzyo Arts Production. The group produces plays with conservation key messages played in the local Tonga language. This has helped to bolster information dissemination as some local people still have challenges communicating in English.

“It is great to perform and spread human-wildlife conflict messages to our fellow community members. The messages are relevant since we are all affected by the same challenges of human-wildlife conflict,” said Alex Moombe, one of the theatre members.

The plays are based on the communities’ real-life situations and combine humour, music, dance and dialogue to deliver vital themes, lessons learnt and experiences gained in community-based natural resources management.

Increased knowledge and awareness of human-wildlife conflict and its effects on both humans and wildlife have been observed.

Additionally, there has been an increase in the use of preventive measures to reduce human-wildlife conflict such as the use of mobile bomas to house livestock, guarding, deterrent and early warning systems. With fewer hyena and other wildlife attacks on their livestock, the residents can now afford to sell their domestic animals for cash, allowing them to pay for their families’ food needs, school fees and medicine.

Perhaps one of the major achievements of the sustainable wildlife management project is the community members’ is behaviour change, some have been transformed from poachers to conservationists.

Blessing Nkomo of Kabozo Village, in Ward 3 said, “I used to be a menacing poacher. I believed that wild animals were destined for the pot or sold to other villagers as bush meat. But there came a point when I had to stop. The messages portrayed by the theatre group are true.”

Poaching is bad for my community at large and for children specifically, he said in a remorseful tone.

Theatrical efforts also demonstrate how culture and art may be used to promote social and behavioural change. The SWM programme has reached out to over 500 community members through theatre.

Mr Maxwell Phiri, the SWM programme site co-ordinator for Zimbabwe, expects that more messages on human-wildlife conflict will be shared with communities and that the local theatre group will continue to spread the messages until communities can co-exist with wildlife.

More focus on human behaviour is required for long-term human-wildlife co-existence, says Mr Phiri.

“It is critical to educate communities about human-wildlife conflict and how it might be avoided, or reduced. However, the extent to which these interventions have an impact is determined by the primary audience being motivated,” Mr Phiri explained.

Binga Rural District Council natural resources officer, Mr Chawulani Munsaka said: “In the past, people used to stand by and watch, or even provide shelter to poachers.”

But things have changed dramatically since then. This has been credited to the SWM programme and the Binga Rural District Council’s deployment of community resource monitors, who are the foot soldiers in charge of patrolling, removing snares and raising awareness about natural resource management issues.

Any suspected poaching incidents are now being reported to the relevant authority such as the traditional leadership, police, BRDC and the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority.

“Poaching has decreased since most individuals have become environmental stewards,” said Mr Munsaka.

While the programme has made great strides, it still has a long way to go in finding effective means of controlling intruding animals.

“We receive many complaints of animals devastating crops and even killing people but resources limit us from attending to all requests promptly. We only have 18 resource monitors who were trained by the programme, in the implementing wards who have to walk, at times, for over 10km,” Mr Munsaka adds.

People had become very bitter and disheartened with problem elephants to an extent of preferring to use harmful means to deter the herds.

“We are not in support of communities using harmful means to deter elephants,”  said Mthokozisi Dlodlo, SWM programme wildlife officer.

“But it highlights the urgent need to find effective methods to keep the elephants out of people’s fields like the chilli fences introduced by the SWM Programme.”

“While Zimbabwe supports international efforts to put a halt to the extermination of certain animals like elephants, we need to promote economic activities that reduce reliance on wild species,” said Mr Phiri.

A lot of wildlife is already protected from consumptive use in large areas set aside as national parks in Africa.

In Southern Africa, for example, this amounts to 10 percent of total land. The critical issue is how to maintain wild land and viable populations of large and often dangerous wild animals such as elephants, hyenas and lions on what is essentially farming land outside protected areas.

In this context, Mr Phiri believes that attaching economic value to wildlife is vital.

“If a farmer cannot use the wildlife to best advantage, he/she will turn the land to other uses such as crop production and cattle ranching, threatening the very existence of wild animals,” said Mr Phiri. — New Ziana