All4APfoundation

Zimbabwe, Newsletter October 2010

Dear readers,

End of October and the heat is on. 40C° is not an exception and patrols are not easy as you can imagine.
October is always a busy month and this one was no stranger. Together with National Park we have conducted an 11 day patrol on the south side of the park, with six NP rangers and 3 from ALL4P. A large area bordering the communal areas over a distance of about 50km with about five villages. Because presence of National Parks in terms of protection is relatively low (no permanent base and few vehicles) the people make the most of what the park has to offer; wood, thatching grass and of course meat.
Buffalo and giraffe is the main thing on the menu here. After a long drive with 10 people in the car and a trailer full of kit, we arrived in a camp that was build by a safari operator, actually for the purpose of anti-poaching. It was used, but not permanently and because of this reason the elephants took care of it so that there is no running water in the camp. The pan with engine is at 150m away, so no problem for us.

ARREST: The first day of our patrol was an instant success. After finding some ‘fresh’ snares we heard voices and laid an ambush. Two poachers carrying snares walked straight into our arms, but unfortunately one of them got away. His name we got so he would be arrested later by the police. In total they had nine snares outstanding and carried three with them, al for buffalo/giraffe. On our request the local safari operator took the suspect to the police station to keep the momentum on the ground.

During the mission we were visited by the Secretary from the ALL4AP foundation in Holland, Ilma. It had been a long time since she was here and she was impressed with what we were doing. She only stayed for less than two weeks, but enough to get an idea of our operations.

At the same time the rest of the team did a bush camp in an area north of our base camp Jackal Berry. They also were on a mission of finding snares and arresting poachers. No poachers for them, but they managed to remove a respectable 143 snares which shows determination and dedication!
At the end of the patrol in the park we could make up a balance of one poacher arrested and 45 heavy gage wire snares which had an average of 5 strands each.
This might not sound much, but the weight of such an amount of snares is considerable. Most of this wire is stolen from the game fence that is used to keep the wildlife in and the cattle out of the park.
In this month a total of 354 wire snares were removed and 3 poachers arrested. Now we are on our way to give a training in November in the Vumba, in the Eastern highlands of Zimbabwe.

Martin & Team