Land grabbers threaten Zim elephants
Sapa-dpa | 01 September, 2011 15:19
About 70 elephants in a wildlife park in south-eastern Zimbabwe are under
threat from a new wave of land encroachers, a conservation group warned
Thursday.
The elephants in the remote Chiredzi River Conservancy have nowhere to go,
said Johnny Rodrigues, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force
(ZCTF).
“For the past week, there has been a new influx of people cutting down
trees, poaching and destroying the already damaged environment,” he said.
Rodrigues said the conservancy was first invaded 11 years ago, at the start
of President Robert Mugabe’s chaotic land reform programme.
The encroachers and elephants had managed to co-exist, said Rodrigues. But
now the elephants are being harassed, chased and snared by the new settlers,
he said.
Some elephant calves have gone missing, while at least two juvenile
elephants have been killed and decapitated, he said. “One elephant has a new
snare embedded in its flesh.”
Animals in Zimbabwe’s private game conservancies, many of them located on
white-owned commercial farms, have been over-run by poachers in the wake of
the land reform programme.
Since 2000, more than 4,000 white farmers have been evicted from the land to
make way for supporters of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.