Machine-gun wielding elephant poaching gang invades Zambian chiefdom…

In an all to common occurrence, a large gang of poachers, obviously forewarned, have taken advantage of the withdrawal for training of eight out of twelve Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) and village scouts from the Nyalugwe chiefdom in Zambia’s southern Luangwa Valley, to poach elephant, buffalo and hippo. Ominously, one of a number of camouflaged men carried a light machine gun and a belt of ammunition across his shoulders. Are rogue elements of the army involved here?

On 13 October, a Nyalugwe villager, Yesai Lungu, phoned Peter Nyalugwe to report that three elephant had been killed, one falling dead in the Chilinga reserve, the other on the privately owned Piamanzi ranch, the other in the West Petauke hunting block – the latter’s tusks being removed by the poachers. Villagers report widespread killing of elephant with only a few of the carcasses being found.

On 18 October, Peter Nyalugwe visited his country, interviewed a fisherman, Langizulu, who reported coming on the machine-gun toting gang of poachers – none of whom he recognized, while he was a kilometer or so from the carcass of a bull elephant busily being stripped by villagers under the supervision of Chief Nyalugwe. The poachers were obviously wary of trying to recover the ivory while the chief was there. In the Chilinga reserve, Peter came on a patrol of ZAWA, which included the notorious Joseph Mbo, whom I had caught hunting earlier this year and who has merely been transferred for his many sins from his former camp, Kalansha, to Nyimba. Present also were Frank Mwaza, Chitambo, and Perry Daka. They had been sent by the regional headquarters at Mfuwe - from their base at Nyimba, as a result of a report Peter had sent through to me, and which I had forwarded. They stayed one week and left; another patrol from Mfuwe itself reportedly patrolled for a period in the Nyalugwe portion of the West Petauke hunting block. Of course, these patrols rarely stay for longer than a week, so the area remains protected by one ZAWA officer at Kasolo camp, one village scout and one ZAWA officer at Mulilanama camp, and in the remaining camp called Fundu, one ZAWA officer and 2 village scouts. What this means is that the area has been left to the poachers for a period of three months while eight of the twelve ‘protectors’ are given a refresher course many miles away. As this is a Norwegian Aid (NORAD) supported project, one wonders at the thinking.

And where, in the absence of ownership rights to wildlife being transferred to the community under a chiefdom trust arrangement, is all this to end? There is just not enough money coming in from hunting concessions to protect wildlife, even were it not shared with ZAWA and the community. Our Luembe Conservancy Trust in the chiefdom north of Nyalugwe, rather than receiving the support of ZAWA and the current UNDP/GEF ’Reclassification of Protected Areas Project’ is left to its own devices, the hope being that it will simply wither and die away, for we are viewed as being people inciting villagers against the Government. Although an assessment of the NORAD project: ‘Focus on environment in NORAD and decentralised management of natural resources in rural development - a project case from Zambia” stated: “The most exiting finding from a political science point of view was the role of the community-programme in empowering the local people and the democratic effects this has.” http://wo.uio.no/as/WebObjects/theses.woa/wa/these?WORKID=9450

It seems that if you are a donor project going about community empowerment it is fine, but if you are an investor/advocacy conglomerate, you are considered to be inciting the community against Government, even a threat to state security.