Wild Conservation – A Houston Zoo Blog

John with local community member

Conflict issues between wildlife, humans, and their livestock do exist in all parts of the world. You might suspect that the fact that this problem is not new, then maybe there would be some solutions. Unfortunately, the solutions are not easily found because the problem is highly dynamic and involves a variety of players. In this particular situation, the players include the wildlife, the farmers, the livestock, the enforcement infrastructure, and the land itself. The land includes a very large national park (Hwange National Park), a national forest (Sikumi National Forest), and a communal area that is inhabited by subsistence farmers.

The national park has a well established wildlife population of herbivores and predators. Many wildlife species experience the scenario of dispersal. As they reproduce, their young grow and eventually strike out on their own. With already established home ranges and some overlap already existing; these dispersal animals must move around and develop their own territory. This process results in many animals leaving the park and residing in the national forest. The success of wildlife species within the national park has been enhanced by pumping of water into ponds for increasing the availability to the animals. This program has eliminated water as the limiting nutrient of the area. One unfortunate result of this effort has been an inflation of the carrying capacity within the park. With a larger and healthier wildlife population within the park, an even larger volume of dispersal animals are now competing to establish new territories and are being pushed from the park at a more rapid rate. The national forest is an ideal habitat and creates what many refer to as a buffer zone between the national park and communal areas. Over time, this buffer zone has evolved into a conflict zone. In the early 1990’s the region suffered a severe drought and an agreement was made to allow members of the community to graze livestock within the boundaries of the national forest. The drought has long since been over, yet the community continues to graze their animals there. The local government and enforcement infrastructure face a variety of challenges and are not successful in returning to the original forest use policy. The members of the community prefer to utilize the national forest for grazing opportunities during the rainy season as a way of keeping the livestock away from their crops. During the dry season, after the crops have been harvested, cattle are grazed closer to home and utilize crop fodder in addition to grasses and browse. As members of the local community are becoming increasingly familiar with the national forest there has been a steady increase in poaching of wildlife through the use of snares. The poaching and use of snares are also difficult to control because local resources and enforcement are spread quite thin. Some wildlife species, particularly elephants, raid crops and destroy private property on a consistent basis. Other more fragile species such as the endangered African Painted Dog are also leaving the park but for other reasons. Larger predators such as the lion and hyena are opportunistic in their behavior and put considerable pressure on the painted dog. Lions often raid the prey of the painted dogs as a source of an easy meal and the hyenas often raid the den sites to kill the offspring and remove competition. As a result, painted dogs leave the protection of the park to hunt for antelope in the marginal lands outside of the park. This effort for survival actually proves quite risky. Over time, greater numbers of painted dogs are being killed by vehicle traffic on public roads and are being found dead in the snares of poachers.

Peter Riger and John Huston at a Painted dog road sign in Zimbabwe