Indigenous Nyangambe Wildlife Project fails to get hunting permits
Written By Web Master on Thursday, 11 September 2014 | 11.9.14
Morris Bishi – CHIREDZI – The Nyangambe Wildlife Project, one of the thriving community wildlife conservancies run by indigenous people in Chiredzi has left stakeholders frustrated as they are failing to get hunting permits from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife despite repeated visits and appeals to the parastatal’s office.
Contacted for comment, Parks and Wildlife Regional Director Mrs Tomu said, “people from Nyangambe should phone me so that I talk to them about their hunting permit.
“They should not talk about the hunting permit in the Press and why is The Mirror involved in this issue?” she queried.
The Mirror last week made a tour of Nyangambe Wildlife Project and met many types of animals including the big five families. Many within the community are regretting the day they decided to embark on this animal conservation project as they say they are not benefitting from it.
The project Chairperson Mr Amos Mangule told The Mirror that the project was started by 181 families in 2006 after realising that the community was getting problems from animals which were straying from Save Valley Conservancy.
“We put aside more than 5 000 hectares of our grazing area and fenced it in order to tap problem animals from Save Valley Conservancy to our benefit. The animals are now countless.
“The problem now is we are failing to get a hunting permit from the responsible authority which is Parks and Wildlife. Since 2006 we have never hunted independently we used to do it in collaboration with other partners who are within Save Valley Conservancy, but that gives us little money”, said Mangule.
He said they visited Parks’ offices several times despite having an ownership clearance from Chiredzi Rural District Council nothing fruitful came out.
“On 17 July an ecologist came and assessed our conservancy and he was impressed” Mangule added. “We tried to fulfil requirements of ZIMASSET but authorities are not supporting us and we don’t know why, the community is the biggest beneficiary we need support to get a hunting permit and we can sustain ourselves” quipped Mangule.
Mr Luka Mukwena a village head said “We are now acting like fools, we are not conducting hunting and we are no longer able to pay our game scouts who mann our conservancy”. “Other projects similar to us were given hunting permits but at Nyangambe that is different, we are thinking of demonstrating at Parks Offices” Mr Mukwena added.news