As Zimbabwe’s food situation deteriorates because of drought and a chaotic land grab, game ranchers warned that billions in foreign currency hunting revenue will be lost because of the chaos in the national parks and game reserves.
High-ranking government officials and army and police personnel have been implicated in the poaching. A Conservation Taskforce spokesman said there had been an alarming increase in poaching in the main national parks of Hwange and Kariba.
Just two months back, poachers in military fatigues shot dead three black rhino – a species listed as the most highly endangered large mammal on Earth – on a private conservancy 100km east of the capital Harare.
The owner of the game park, John Travers, said poachers armed with AK47 automatic rifles evaded the armed guards surrounding the rhino at the Imire game park and shot dead two females and a male, but left a four-week-old calf unharmed.
Zimbabwe in the 1980s had the largest population in Africa of black rhino, about 7,500, but a wave of poaching all over Africa – driven by demand for the horn in the Far East as a cure for fevers and a sexual stimulant and in Yemen where it was used for dagger handles – decimated the population, including Zimbabwe’s.
This week animal rights activists started a lobby to isolate the government in the forthcoming Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
The activists say their campaign is as a result of cruel methods, such as wire snares, grenades and spears, that are being used to kill animals such as the endangered black rhino and elephant.
Ranchers said thousands of wild animals were slaughtered for meat during the Unity Day celebrations in December.
A senior official of the Wildlife Producers’ Association in Nyamandlovu, said there was a dramatic increase in poaching where vehicles were used.
He said animals like sable were being killed for meat when they could fetch up to US$3,000 in the market. Game ranchers in the region said up to 70 percent of their animals had been killed.
Bubiyana conservancy in Matabeleland South has lost close to 30 black rhinos – some of which were killed for meat and others for their horns. Wildlife farmers warned that if the situation continued, species such as the painted dog and the Tsessebe, imported from Namibia, would be extinct by the end of the year.