Why Zimbabwe has to sell its elephants

The country pursues a philosophy of sustainable consumptive and non-consumptive use of its natural resources for economic development.

This philosophy is grounded on the creation of value for wildlife and in turn, this has incentivised conservation efforts as more people spare land for wildlife instead of cropping.

Zimbabwe developed and is implementing sound conservation policies, and species-specific action plans for elephants, rhinos, lions and other animals.

Application of these strategies has resulted in the decline of poaching of key wildlife species since 2013.

The downside of the high elephant population is conflict, especially with local communities who live with wildlife and or share boundaries with the major protected areas.

In the past five years, nearly 500 lives have been lost while 582 cattle were lost to wildlife attacks.

Thousands of hectares of crops have been destroyed.

Over the same period, 153 people were injured by wildlife.

In order for our people to appreciate the importance of these animals as economic enablers, we need resources to build schools, clinics, roads and economic infrastructure from these natural resources.

Wildlife must contribute resources for community development, management of human-wildlife conflicts and its conservation.

This can only be achieved by allowing us to trade in wildlife particularly elephants.

We have made an undertaking to harvest elephants in a sustainable manner and abide by international wildlife trade regulations governed by CITES and our national laws.

In the spirit of transparency, we have disclosed to the world the number of elephants we sold, how much we received from the sales and what we did with the money.

In addition, we undergo annual audits by the Auditor-General and have never been found on the wrong side since the assumption of office by Dr Fulton Upenyu Mangwanya’s management team in 2017.

The Government takes seriously the conservation of wildlife and will continue to implement a mix of strategies including anti-poaching and anti-illegal trade, lobbying for the removal of the trade restrictions, exploring alternative mechanisms for the ivory trade, and revamping its eco-tourism and resource mobilisation.

By Tinashe Farawo of  the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority for NewZwire

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