Zimbabwe
Once called the bread basket of Africa, and with wildlife that would bring huge numbers of tourists, much of that is gone. Whether you subscribe to the view that the majority of the blame lies with Robert Mugabe who ran the country for 4 decades, or something else, it is an unfortunate fact that it is not as it was.
Despite this, Zimbabwe is returning to its former glory even if it is taking time. There are a wide range of places that are of particular note.
Perhaps most excitingly, Zimbabwe has reserves in arguably 2 of the most exciting conservation initiatives on the continent in both the Limpopo Transfrontier park, and the KAZA transfrontier park.
What is increasingly recognized, is that it is far to great a cost for any one country to protect enough land to create viable populations of animals such as lions. However, by countries protecting land on their borders, vast areas can be created.Â
The Limpopo transfrontier park currently consisting of 35,000 square km, but with plans of increasing this to 99,000. This is not aimed to be all total wilderness. To the contrary, the Limpopo national park (a small part of the transfrontier park has roughly 20,000 people living within it). The general idea of transfrontier parks is to link reserves, re-establish old migration corridors and generally make the wildlife populations capable of sustaining any problems that might occur. At the same time, the aim is to change things so that the earning potential of the whole park and each little bit is increased, thereby giving a good future to the people who live around these reserves.
The Kalahari Zambezi (KAZA transfrontier park) is even more ambitious. Covering a combined area of 520,000 square km (200,000 square miles), and will take in a great portion of the west side of Zimbabwe. Like the Limpopo, there will be areas which are inhabited, but it will combine vast numbers of reserves national parks hunting areas and conservancies. Like the Limpopo, people are not cut out, and around 2.7 million live within its boundaries – mostly along the Okavango and Zambezi rivers.
Zimbabwe is in the process of moving hundreds of elephants and two prides of lions from hwange National Park due to drought drying up their water pools, as well as shipping dozens to zoos in china
Drought hit animals too, and in this instance a Drought in Zimbabwe has hit hwange national park so hard that the animals have started to die in large numbers. While the number of tourists that come to Zimbabwe have fallen dramatically since Mugabe started doing his more destructive policies, these fall in tourists has started …
Southern African countries Zimbabwe, Botswana, Angola and Namibia are calling for an end to the ban on ivory sales
This group of Southern African countries are once again raising the prospect of them selling the ivory that they have accumulated over the years. In the majority of African countries that have wild elephants it is standard practice when Game Wardens come across dead elephants to remove the tusks. This is because it has been …
Might a raise in the minimum age for lion trophy hunting help?
At the moment, in most areas, male lions can be hunted from the age of 6. Unfortunately as the age of the lion is regularly over-estimated, this means that lions as young as 4 are often shot. A recent proposal is to increase the age to 8. This would mean that young lions are not …
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Guard dogs to save Namibian Cheetah?
While the Cheetah has suffered a horrific fall in range and numbers in the world over the last century, there are some hopes for the species. Cheetah are not big cats- this means that they often struggle to thrive in small reserves alongside other big cats. What this has meant is that in many countries …
Is the government finally going to ban hunting trophy import
Back in 2019, the conservative government passed a law banning the import of trophies from animals hunted abroad. Despite their status, various wild species are hunted in the wild and in theory this law would stop this. Now, you might notice that it is now almost 2022, so what happened? Well it was announced in …
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The website was hacked! nothing lost, and wildlife tourism to Africa can return
Hello everyone! We survive So, the website was hacked. Nothing was stolen, from what I was told they were just able to delete the website. Thankfully we back up, so we have survived. We have added a significant extra layer of protection which should make it impossible for the same problem to arise (it had …
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Can Cheetah be saved by moving them around?
In South Africa, as much of the cheetah population as much of the cheetah population live either outside protected land or in reserves that are small, with space for only a few individuals. Cheetah, being small, cannot defend their kills from Leopards Lions and Hyena, as well as loosing many of their young to these …
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Can hunting ever be ethical? How can it work?
There are many sports Hunters around the world. A significant portion of them live in the States and western Europe-it is generally a rich man’s (and woman) game. There are certainly parts of the world for which hunting is a sensible use of the land. However this is not true across the vast majority.
Live sightings map coming soon
Apologies for the pause in articles going up, I have been concentrating on creating a wildlife sightings board. This should be able to go up in the next week or so. Obviously, we will hide any sightings that become necessary if poaching becomes an issue once again. The idea of the Sightings map, is to …
Cheetah population in South Africa has almost doubled in 9 years-how?
Cheetah are one of those species that have done rather badly over the last century. Back in 1900 there was around 100,000 cheetahs across Africa, now there is 7100. Many people would argue that all species have suffered similar losses, but this isn’t true. For instance African lions numbered around 200,000 in 1900. They number …
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Living alongside….. Lions
Lions are amazing animals to encounter while you are on holiday. They are fascinating animals and given their ability to hunt they hold a certain danger which we find exciting. But what about those people who live alongside Lions all year long?
Rhino hunter in the Kruger National Park appears to have been killed by elephant and then eaten by lions
As is well known globally, the Kruger National Park in South Africa has had a very serious problem with rhino poaching over the last decade or so. A significant proportion of the remaining wild white rhinos live with in the Kruger so it is not a surprise that this is where much of the white …
Transfrontier parks – allowing wildlife to exist closer to how it did before humans arrived
In Africa it is becoming increasingly common for national parks to be declared on both sides of a border. This allows the protected area to be vastly larger than either country could succeed in, on its own. This is important because many of the mammals that live in Africa need a lot of space and …
Does hunting pay its way?
Even in the current age where many species such as elephants and lions are facing steep declines in population and range, there are still many countries where it is legal to go and hunt them and other species. Unlike many conservationists I am not inherently against hunting, however the way it is done in many …
Review of Kruger National Park
Size [usr 4.5] Facilities [usr 5] Range of animals [usr 5] Road quality [usr 4.5] Wildness [usr 3.5] Kruger is one of the few national parks in the world that is large enough to have a sizeable population for some of its rarer animals. It is also part of the Limpopo transfrontier park which includes the Limpopo park in Mozambique, …