A war has been raging between the rural community of Mabale in Matabeleland North province in Zimbabwe and wildlife from the largest National park in Zimbabwe the Hwange national park. The villagers residing on the periphery of the park are living in constant fear as lions stray into their homesteads in search of easy prey. The communities have lost live stocks to lions and often have their crops ravaged by elephants.
The human wildlife conflict has been raging for a year when the lion and elephant population in the park increased rapidly.
The Hwange national park currently has an elephant population of 45000 and lion population of over 600 the largest in the world.The ideal carrying capacity of the park is 15000 elephants.The growth of the wild life population causes heads and prides to fight for territory, the losers are dislodged and there by forced to find new territory for hunting. This has resulted in dislodged prides moving into communal lands attacking livestock and in some instances humans.
Due to loss of livestock and crops, most families in Mabale have been robbed of their source of income, as a result, most children have dropped out of school. Those children whose parents afford sometimes miss school as they fear to encounter the roaming lions on their way to school.Adults are now forced to accompany children to school depriving them of time to work their land.
One resident Misheck Mpofu lost 9 cows and 5 goats to lions in the last year alone.
In the past incidents of lions attacking livestock in communal lands used to happen at night but the cats have become so vicious they now attack even during the day.
Retired soldier Abraham Ncube is lucky to be alive to tell the story of how he wrestled with a predator after he tried to scare it from pouncing on his goats. For his troubles, Ncube incurred a medical bill of $1077,
Like many who have lost live stock crops and essentially livelihood Abraham Ncube will be left licking the wounds as they there is no national policy on compensating victims of human wildlife conflict. Ncube can only but count himself lucky as many have not survived an encounter with the predator.
84-year-old granny Laina Mathe of Woodlands Farm Victoria Falls district has been left to fend for her 3 grand children after the gruesome and traumatic death of her daughter.
James Tshuma the oldest of the deceased woman's children watched helplessly as the lioness lying next to the carcass of a cow mauled his mother for more than an hour as she screamed until all she could do was groan before going silent.
The parks area manager concurs that the human-Wildlife conflict is worsening and becoming more difficult to manage.
He had this to say:
So far this year we have attended to quite a number of incidences where we have shot about 6 elephants. The number of lions that we have in this park they have increased to more than 500, this is now posing threat because the carrying capacity has exceeded and we are having spill overs into the community.
Since 2014, 5 people were killed while another 5 were injured by lions and elephants while 61 cows 14 goats and 25 donkeys were lost to lions straying from Hwange National Park. With the wild life population growing at an alarming rate coupled with proposed ban on the hunting of the African lion and elephants, this conflict will have devastating effects. More people will lose lives livelihood to animals.
There is likely going to be an upsurge in retaliatory killing of these animals by villagers who already feel that they are not benefiting from the marauding animals.Poaching is also likely to rise sharply and in all this, the country and the communities will not benefit.
