A year ago, Hanganani Gideon Dube, 75, was attacked by an elephant while herding his cattle in a village in western Zimbabwe, near the country’s largest pachyderm reserve. Now, he tells himself, he is no longer “good for anything.”
Dube lives about 30 km from Hwange, near the Botswana border. The area is known for its 50,000 elephants, which live in a vegetated area of 14,600 km2. A real problem as these overpopulated animals venture further and further outside the park in search of food.
In May 2021, Dube came face to face with one of them. “I ran away but I didn’t realize I was getting in someone else’s way,” she told AFP.
He no longer remembers what happened after, because he lost consciousness. Neighbors picked him up and took him to the hospital. Today, he can no longer support his six children, two of whom are still of school age.
The government does not provide any help or compensation in the event of an incident with a wild animal, although these are increasing more and more. Since the beginning of the year, 60 people have died in incidents with pachyderms, compared to 72 for all of last year, according to the executive.
The country, home to a quarter of Africa’s elephants, is one of the rare nations in the world where its population is increasing by 5% a year.
– Elephants on the highway –
At night, some of these large mammals traverse the highway, according to an AFP journalist on the spot. And in front of the local clinic lionesses roam, undeterred by the headlights of passing cars.
Zimbabwe has about 100,000 elephants, nearly double the capacity of its parks, according to conservationists.
In other parts of Africa, the species has been decimated by poachers. However, Zimbabwe and its neighbors, which account for 70% of the continent’s elephants, are campaigning for the ivory trade to be allowed.
The government this week invited 15 countries to Hwange, including China and Japan, where ivory is highly prized, to advance the project. Kenya and Tanzania, which oppose the trade, were not invited.
The international sale of ivory has been prohibited since 1989 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Some exceptional sales were allowed in 1999 and 2008.
“Our conservation methods are working and instead of being punished, we should be rewarded,” Fulton Mangwanya of the parks management authority told AFP, referring to the possibility of Zimbabwe withdrawing from the convention.
According to some countries, including Zimbabwe, the money spent on securing huge ivory stocks, acquired by natural deaths or confiscations, could be used to finance the conservation or shipment of pachyderms to countries where they are in decline.
But a group of 50 nature protection organizations warned this week of the risks that this policy would entail.
Resumption of this trade “would send a dangerous signal to poachers and criminal organizations that elephants are a commodity,” which would “increase the threat to the species.”
