Professor Johan du Toit says the move has led to wildlife populations being seriously overhunted in many parts of the country.
He warned that the black rhino population, one of the species that attracts high-spending foreign tourists and hunters, now faces the spectre of extinction.
But he believes international help could avert the disaster.
du Toit, who is director of the Mammal Research Unit, says commercial farms in Zimbabwe were home to many rare large mammals, including cheetah, black rhino and sable antelope.
"Commercial farmland and ranching land in Zimbabwe supported a very significant proportion of the country's biodiversity. It has been severely impacted after land was thrown over to subsistence agriculture," he said.
The Zimbabwe Government insists that prior to the agrarian revolution only about 30 percent of white-owned land was actually used for farming. The minister of Environment Francis Nhema quoted this figure to dismiss du Toit’s findings.
But the professor dismissed this, saying most of the arable land was cultivated, while the rest supported indigenous woodland that was used for grazing cattle, or for wildlife, or both.
"The issue is that dumping impoverished peasants on geometrically-plotted patches of virgin non-arable land, without any infrastructure, tillage equipment, venture capital, housing, water supplies, or training will result quite simply in an ecological disaster," said du Toit.
"Wildlife populations are being overhunted and snared, habitat loss has been rapid, and the whole crisis risks getting exponentially worse."
He acknowledged that Zimbabwe could not afford to provide the sort of infrastructure required. But he believes the international community could help. He says it’s too late to undo the damage that has been done – but there is still time to save the little that is left.
He believes Zimbabwe can still find a solution to cut its losses. But if it fails to do so, he thinks the future is bleak.
"We're going to lose some large populations and some important gene pools in the near future," says du Toit.
Post published in: Environment