Hunting of black rhinos on farms on the increase
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Zimbabwe’s policy of redistributing land owned by white commercial farmers
has caused unmitigated “ecological disaster”, according to an eminent
conservationist.
04.07.1106:11am
Chief Reporter
Professor Johan du Toit, says wildlife populations have been overhunted in
Zimbabwe after farms were handed over to black Zimbabweans.
He warned that the country’s black rhinos, one of the species that attracts
high-spending foreign tourists and hunters, is at great risk right now,
faced with the spectre of extinction.
But he believes international help could avert the disaster.
Professor du Toit, director of the Mammal Research Unit, says commercial
white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were home to many rare large mammals,
including cheetah, black rhino and sable – a type of antelope.
“White-owned commercial farmland and ranchland in Zimbabwe supported a very
significant proportion of the country’s biodiversity. It has been severely
impacted after land was thrown over to subsistence agriculture.”
The Zimbabwe Government insists that prior to the agrarian revolutiion only
about 30 percent of white-owned land was actually used for farming, the
minister of Environment Francis Nhema said, dismissing the findings..
But the professor dismisses this, saying most of the arable land was
cultivated, while the rest supported indigenous woodland that was used for
grazing cattle, or for wildlife, or both.
“The issue is that dumping impoverished peasants on geometrically-plotted
patches of virgin non-arable land, without any infrastructure, tillage
equipment, venture capital, housing, water supplies, or training will result
quite simply in an ecological disaster,” says Professor du Toit.
“Wildlife populations are being overhunted and snared, habitat loss has been
rapid, and the whole crisis risk getting exponentially worse.”
Professor du Toit acknowledges that Zimbabwe itself cannot afford to provide
that sort of infrastructure. But he believes the international community
could step in and help. He says its too late to undo the damage, but there
was need to save the little that left.
He believes Zimbabwe can still find a solution to cut its losses. But if it
fails to do so, he thinks the future is bleak.
“We’re going to lose some large populations and some important gene pools in
the near future,” says Professor du Toit.