Mozambique’s Zambezi community welcomes the return of hunting
JOHANNESBURG: Just when the residents of Mozambique’s Tete Province-based Tchuma Tchato hunting community had begun to significantly enjoy the benefits from hunting, they together with other hunting communities in Southern Africa suffered a sudden stop. These hunting benefits, which include wildlife and habitat conservation as well as school, road construction and supply of borehole water, came to a screeching halt following the COVID-19 international travel restrictions.
This also led to the stoppage of international hunters’ trips to Tchuma Tchato. The lifting of travel bans, however, has led to a resumption of these activities.
“We have already started hunting,” said Justin Rodger, Operations Manager of Safaris De Moçambique in an interview this month.
Tete is one of Mozambique’s uniquely situated provinces that shares its borders with Zimbabwe and Zambia and is known for its rich wilderness, wildlife and peaceful communities. The Tchuma Tchato hunting community is less than a nine-hour drive from Zimbabwe’s capital city of Harare, using the Kanyemba gravel road. It is a transfrontier community with Zambia’s Luangwa and Zimbabwe’s Kanyemba hunting communities as its immediate neighbours within a walking distance.
“We note with great happiness that the return of hunting brings back game meat to our community,” said Tchuma Tchato Community chairperson, Clemente Shumba in an interview this week.
“Due to the COVID-19 international travel bans that led to the temporary stoppage of hunting, the whole of last year we did not have game meat which helps boost our protein base.”
The Tchuma Tchato Community’s benefits from hunting include wildlife, forest, land and river conservation. Other positive impacts of hunting on Tchuma Tchato range from clean drinking water supply for the community, road construction, provision of transport in times of emergency healthcare situations as well as the construction of local schools.
Tchuma Tchato is literary translated as ‘our wealth.’ Wildlife revenue is the only significant source of wealth for the community. Tchuma Tchato is a rich hunting economy and the residents, as well as Safaris De Moçambique, are eager to continue growing through sustainable hunting. Wildlife hunted there includes elephant, leopard, buffalo, fish, lion, hippo, warthog and crocodile as well as an abundant population of the plains game animals.
The Tchuma Tchato residents are increasingly appreciating hunting benefits as revenue from only one hunted old elephant or lion bull that is no longer of reproductive value, can be used to build a school. In turn, the school produces professionals that support the socio-economic wellbeing of a country. Money from a hunted buffalo bull can build a community clinic. It can ‘supply’ borehole water to hunting communities that are traditionally located in dryland suited for wildlife hunting. Equally, revenue from a hunted leopard can save a degraded forest or a polluted river. Income from hunted wildlife can be used to employ, buy firearms and uniforms for community game rangers, and pay for their wages to protect wildlife and its habitat from poachers.
These are some of the little-known hunting benefits being enjoyed by both humankind and nature in the Tchuma Tchato hunting community.
“The return of hunting brings wildlife and habitat conservation and we intend to keep drilling further boreholes for the wildlife to support wildlife management programmes,” Rodger said.
“We have continued our anti-poaching efforts and these are permanent.”
He added that the list of the Tchuma Tchato community development projects that they are going to implement this season, funded by hunting revenue, include the building of a school in Chintopo Village, as well as an ‘administrative post’ for the area.
“We will continue drilling of boreholes for potable water for the local community,” he said.
Largely settled on the fish-filled sparkling Zambezi River water banks, the Tchuma Tchato residents find it very difficult to harness water for drinking. The situation leaves boreholes as the most practical and healthy water supply method.
Borehole water is bilharzia-free while those who have dared try and fetch water from the banks of the crocodile and hippo overpopulated majestic Zambezi River in Tchuma Tchato Community have either parted with their limb or life.
They have also been infected with bilharzia.
Therefore, the provision of a borehole is a safer and healthier alternative.
“Potable water is scarce inland and the Zambezi River poses a significant risk for local people due to crocodiles,” Rodger said.
Meanwhile, the Tchuma Tchato Community continues to pin hopes on the hunting economy for a better and healthier life.
Hunting revenue also provides them with income for the continued maintenance of a 650-kilometre road network.
In Tchuma Tchato one soon learns that hunting revenue benefits can positively change residents’ attitudes towards wildlife.
They now tolerate the costs of co-existing with wildlife and never collaborate with poachers.
“The local community works together with us and have started to inform us and the authorities about poaching incidents,” said Rodger.
“It shows the willingness of the local leaders to act as custodians of the wildlife.
“We are also going to continue conservation education for children from the local community.”
Interestingly, evidence of sustainable hunting in the Tchuma Tchato community dates back centuries ago. A recent interview with a Tchuma Tchato historian, Jairos Jambo, revealed that international hunters, most of them from Western countries, used to engage in hunting barter trade with local chiefs in exchange for monster-sized elephant ivory.
Contrary to the Western animal rights groups’ propaganda that hunting leads to wildlife extinction, none of the hunted species has ever been threatened with extinction.
This proves overwhelmingly that hunting is a sustainable wildlife conservation management practice.
The elephants that were hunted for their ivory centuries ago are still being hunted in Tchuma Tchato today.
From Angola to Zimbabwe, the African caves are ‘pregnant’ with well-preserved cave paintings of stories that provided evidence of a sustainable African hunting culture from centuries ago – with no trace that it ever threatened the hunted wildlife populations.
Elephants, lions, buffaloes, giraffes, rhinos, leopards, kudu and buffalo are well documented in the cave paintings as hunted species of centuries ago.
They are not extinct. They are still being hunted today and their populations are growing.
The UN Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora allows wildlife hunting, even of endangered species such as black rhino, as long as the percentage off-take does not harm the hunted population.
At the 18th CITES meeting held in August 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland, CITES member countries voted in support of South Africa’s proposal to hunt five adult male black rhinos to a total number of adult male black rhinos not exceeding 0.5 percent of its total black rhino population.
All South Africa’s three black rhino subspecies have increased from a total of approximately 800 animals in 1992, to 2,046 by the end of 2017.
Sadly, Kenya is going the opposite way with wildlife conservation in Africa, while other African countries are excelling.
Influenced and funded by Western animal rights groups, in May 1977 Kenya banned hunting. This led to increased poaching that Kenya is failing to stop because communities settled next to its national parks and game reserves suddenly lost benefits from wildlife hunting and incentives to conserve wildlife.
Instead of collaborating with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to stop poaching, most Kenyan rural communities started to generally collaborate with poachers.
This led to a continued sharp decline of Kenya’s elephant population due to poaching.
Meanwhile, the KWS is desperately attempting to rescue its failed wildlife conservation policy using a ‘shoot-to-kill policy’ that Kenyan human rights lawyers say has so far resulted in 14 villagers being gunned down by KWS rangers, with many maimed and traumatised.
*Koro is a Johannesburg-based international award-winning independent environmental journalist who writes and has written extensively on environment and development issues in Africa.