All4AP Foundation

Zimbabwe, Newsletter August 2009

Dear readers,
The poaching season seems to have started. After Ilma, our foundation’s secretary had left on the 1st of this month, we prepared for an operation we had in our heads for some time, the sweeping of the ‘Shangani River’.
We have to plan these sort of operations since the ‘Shangani’ is a bit further than our ‘normal’ area. This means for instance slaughtering a cow to fill our freezer and make sure we are able to fill our stomachs during the patrols that are ever getting warmer now.(At the end of this month the thermometer starts at 5C in the morning to go to well over 30C in the afternoon). Maize has top be grinded and a trip to Bulawayo made to sort out some admin. It’s quite some work to streamline a proper operation.
On Monday 17th of August ’09 we went. For at least a week we would be bush camping and so we did. Main aim was to access the situation from the ‘Gwayi-Shangani’ dam up to the Lupane village communal Lands in the East. Second was to arrest poachers if there was a quick opportunity, since this (ambush) can be a time consuming type of work and it could mean that we would not be able to access the whole distance.
Our tactic was as usual; We make as few as possible contact with the outside world and are completely ‘self sufficient’.
Our suspicion (a lot of poaching) proved to be right; Within 3 days we already collected 200 snares from the forest!
After 5 days they had become 338! 100 of these snares were set for birds like Guinea fowls (the only victim we found in them however was a scrub hare..)
The other 238 were set for mammals, from small to large, but the one strand snares (for bush buck and Impala) were more abundant this time.
Eleven victims were found under which Buffalo’s, Impala, Bush bucks, Bush Pig, Porcupine and Scrub Hare. A successful operation which we will repeat in the future, whereby we might change the aim to sweeping (cleaning) in combination with arresting (ambush). Also several dozens of ‘Mopani’ trees were found.
Other good news to mention is that the fines for poaching wild animals have been changed from the Zimbabwe Dollar to the US dollar. This will make our work more effective and probably preventive.
A fine for the poaching of an elephant for an example, is now US$20.000,- and bail will not be granted (ivory) Some other examples of fines are:
Buffalo bull $6.000,- ; Duicker ordanary $400,-; Giant Eland $2.000,-; Bush Buck $500,-; Bush Pig $500,-; Impala $500,-; Kudu $1.000,-; Lion $5.000,- and for Rhinoceros $ 120.000,-.
We hope that these fines Will have a positive effect on the amount of poaching.
At the end of this month we were again visited by very interested visitors from ‘Save’ who we took for a (almost usual..) ‘tour in the jungle’.
A busy but satisfying month and we are looking forward to the next one.
Best wishes,
Martin &team