We haven’t had an elephant shot since the 16th of October last year. It is more monitoring than an anti-poaching initiative. We do work with another organisation called Flying for Wildlife they keep a presence and spot carcasses. We lost one Landrover in the rainy season crossing a riverbed, so we were down to five vehicles. They have added a vehicle and a driver to our six vehicles, so that’s helped, but we are still short on vehicles. There is another organisation called Zambezi Society. We are hoping that having completed that base, they may support our operations because we are the only people doing anything significant on the ground as far as direct anti-poaching effort goes. So far, they have been putting their money into the base built by the Tashinga Initiative. They are fundraisers, so they will raise money and put that money into conservation. There is another organisation called the Zambezi Elephant fund. There is the Tashinga Initiative who do more construction they’ve just a built a base for the reaction unit in the middle of the park. On the other side, there are a few NGO’s who are helping. We’ve managed to raise and spend $300 000, and we’ve probably had less than $10 000 donated from other operators. There are bits and pieces of help coming, but it’s not enough. I needed the help too, so I was appreciative of it. I’m paying their wages so it worked out well for them because in the off-season safaris close, so I see it as more of a benefit for them. ![]() This past rainy season we had another operator offer 1000 dollars of fuel for three months which has helped us. One operator sold me a Landrover at a discount, so that was a help I needed the Landrover plus the break in the price was welcome. We’ve tried to create a collaborative environment and invite other safari operators to help us, but we’ve had very little assistance. HAVE YOU HAD ANY HELP FROM OUTSIDE PARTIES? A lot of it is not necessarily the hunting operator’s choice, but they have had quotas forced upon on them by the authorities, National Parks included. It becomes unsustainable, and the populations start decreasing. For example, if you are hunting you should be shooting 50-year-old plus elephants, but because the quotas are too high, you’ve shot all the 50-year-olds, then all the 40-year-olds and then you start hunting the 30 and 20-year-olds. Due to economic stress, quotas have been kept high even though numbers have dropped due to poaching. If you protect the animals and the operators are responsible, and handle hunting quotas correctly, it should be sustainable, and you should be able to maintain an elephant population. ![]() ![]() ![]() Those areas outside the parks are hunting areas. Before the poaching epidemic, there were more elephants living outside the parks than in the parks. Hunting is always a contentious issue because of the emotional aspect of it, but if done correctly it’s a strong conservation tool. WHAT IMPACT HAS HUNTING HAD ON ELEPHANT NUMBERS? We have had two seasons of relatively intense poaching since then, so we are probably at 10 000. The last count came up with 12 000 in the Lower Zambezi Valley and 3000 in Mana Pools. The lower Zambezi Valley has lost 40% of its elephant numbers in the last 20 years.
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