News & Updates
Zimbabwe, Newsletter August -September 2010
Dear readers,
Already end of September and it starts to get hotter (almost 30C°). The
trees have all shed their leaves and the ‘Msasa’ trees are already anticipating
their rains at the end of November probably, by showing their fresh light
green leaves.
Rhino’s
In these months we had a varied program. Of course there were the regular
patrol in the Gwayi area. Then in the beginning of September there was a
request from National Parks if we would assist in tracking down rhino’s.
The national veterinary department had made a plan to dehorn as many
rhino’s as possible, to discourage the poaching, for both the black and white
rhino. Of course we assisted them together with other partners and in the
end 4 rhino’s where dehorned.
It’s sad that it has to be this way, but better than the extinction
from the species.
We hope there will be a lot of publicity around the dehorning which hopefully
will prevent poachers from trying to follow them in vain, since they will not
have the precious horn.
Thereafter we went to patrol the Shangani River to check if the situation now
had improved. Unfortunately it did not take too much effort to find our first
70 snares. Probably there were more, but since people were hunting in the
area we had to abandon the mission.
Two of our members came back from a three month training course from a
sister organization in Victoria Falls (International Anti Poaching Foundation).
They already provide the other team members with their knowledge and
motivation. In their absence we still continued our work and did, on request
from the Chief from the area, a patrol on the south side of Hwange National
Park. Here also we were only allowed a few days because of the hunting, but
it looks like the villagers do not poach much in this area. This mostly because
they graze their own cattle in that area. We did found tracks from people
entering the Park with domestic dogs (dogs are being used for poaching).
Tikki Hywood Trust
We received another request from the Tikki Hywood Trust to perform an anti
Poaching training in the Eastern Highlands from Zimbabwe. We accepted and
this will take place in November this year. Idea is to train about 12 people
(under which 6 NP scouts) to secure this mountainous area in which some
specific animals live like the Semango monkey and the endangered Blue
Duiker. The monkey’s look like the more common ‘Vervet’ but live only in
this area. The training does not mean that the rest of the team is not active.
Our partners will assist in deploying them with our operations.
Fisherman
At the end of September we arrested twice a large Group of fishing people.
They used mosquito nets to catch their fish in the Gwayi River. Fishing with
these sort of nets is illegal.
Martin & team
Note: Follow us on FACE BOOK (ALL4AP)! Look at the pictures and
video’s and become a friend (and invite yours to join too!)
