By Trust Moyo –
Wildlife in Zambia and many other countries on earth forms a major component of the natural resources that are very useful to the survival of human beings.
It is important to remind you that of all continents of the world, it’s only our lovely continent (AFRICA) that has remained with a lot of wildlife followed by South America. Additionally, Africa is considered to be the home of mega fauna (big mammals).
On top of this, we can also boast of our lovely and beautiful mother Zambia because it’s one of the hot spots of the countries of Africa blessed with the possession of the mega fauna.
If you did not know, today is the opportunity for you to know that you can go to any part of the world and stand firm with pride and spread the news that your country, the lovely mother Zambia is not only a hot spot of wildlife, but a home to the big five (Elephant, Leopard, Lion, Rhino and the Buffalo).
Let me use this opportunity to sensitize some of my country men out there. Most of you do not know the proper meaning of what wildlife is.
When u hear of wildlife, what comes into your mind is animal life and mainly, only those big animals that you mostly know.
Well, I can give you a credit because at least you know part of it.
However, the correct definition of wildlife is any other animal and, or plant life that exist in the wild in a free state without human interference and is not domesticated or tamed by man.
This means that wildlife is any living thing that falls under any of the five kingdoms (plant, animal, fungi, protista and monera)
The truth that you have to know is that almost all countries had some wildlife at some point in time.
My questions to you are that: are all of those animals still there? If no, what happened to them? Can Zambia have such an experience? Are we going to continue boasting of being the home to the big five (mega fauna) in the next 10 or 20 years to come with what is happening in our country now?
Some of the answers to the above questions are that; due to some bad practices such as habitat destruction (degazzeting of protected areas for wildlife to other land uses like what is happening in the lower Zambezi and kalumbila mining area of north western province), overharvesting, islandisation, introduction of invasive species, switching predation, global warming and many others, a good number of wildlife species like the mammoth, dinaoursurs and many others have gone to extinction.
Meaning most of us who had never seen such animals before, will never see them alive in any national park on earth apart from movies. Therefore, the best way to make sure that we prevent the animals that are still living is to conserve them.
Conservation is the protection and taking care of the valuable resources from extinction for future use. Now the question is how do we conserve? what is the best method of conservation?
In the early 1980s, as heavy poaching decimated wildlife populations, new models of conservation with integrated community development emerged.
As a way of conservation, Zambia allocated an impressive proportion of its land surface to wildlife conservation.
The protected area is comprised of 20 national parks and 36 game management areas (GMAs) and a variety of other protected area categories like game ranches. Together these areas comprise ~40% of the nation’s land area
In addition to this, the Wildlife Act No 12 and National Parks and Wildlife Policy of 1998, established the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) Act as the Zambian government of those days (credit to it) realized that without viable natural resources, future generations would face increased risks of hunger and poverty, which would compel them to further exploit their diminishing natural resources, explicitly formalized the concept of Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) and recognized communities as partners in wildlife conservation in the Game Management Areas (GMAs).
As the saying goes, where two or more parties come together, the targeted goals can be achieved with easy
.Game Management Areas (GMAs are wildlife estates in communally owned lands in which some wild animals are protected and used primarily for regulated hunting (consumptive tourism) and photographic safaris (non-consumptive tourism) . they were established to act as buffer zones to National Parks in order to protect wild animals and their habitats to support a viable wildlife-based tourism industry, which contributes significantly to the national economy and to the improvement national parks and GMAs
ZAWA has given some powers to communities to be managing GMAs through Community based natural resource management boards (CBNRM) for the promotion of sustainable utilization of the wildlife resources for the benefit of the nation, local communities and wildlife resources in GMAs. Other activities such as human settlement, agriculture, and other livelihoods are also allowed in GMAs.
The biggest challenge now is that, todays government has stopped funding ZAWA adequately but its getting more shares from what ZAWA is making.
As a result, ZAWA is not fulfilling the initial plans of equality sharing of resources with the communities. CBNRM and ZAWA where initially supposed to be sharering resources equally, as a way of motivating the community members. benefit sharing refers to sharing income generated from various sources, including consumptive use of the conserved resources (wildlife – through hunting and live sales, fisheries, timber, non-timber forest products (honey, edible insects, such as Saturniidae caterpillars, non-consumptive uses such as photographic safaris and carbon offset marketing, traditional tax rates for community members (e.g., on non-timber forest products and fisheries, etc.).
This revenue sharing with the local communities was supposed to be adequate to offset the opportunity cost of living with not only wildlife but other natural resources, and be able to provide sufficient incentives for the communities to effectively participate in the protection and management of the wildlife and other natural resources but this has not been the case, as s result, the community members era not fully participating towards wildlife conservation instead, the levels of poaching and other unsound use of wildlife protected areas are on the increase. Consequently, wildlife and Zambia’s Game Management Areas (GMAs) are in a spiral of degradation economically, sociologically and ecologically.
Recommendations for the way forward
•    To establish an effective park management and financial structure and enhance the capacity of staff to manage the park.
•    Allocating exclusive ownership of blocks of land and the wildlife therein to specific communities after defining the membership of such communities
•    Increase governmental funding to ZAWA to increase their capacity and reduce the need to generate revenue at the expense of sustainable wildlife management and equal sharing with the communities.
•    ZAWA should play a key role in facilitating development of wildlife economies on community lands in GMAs and regulating them to ensure they operate within acceptable parameters.
•    Curb illegal hunting of wild animals in the designated National Park and stop the destruction of critical habitats.
Achievements:
•    Establish ecological research and monitoring programme.
Achievements:
•    Enhance the capacity of local communities in Game Management Areas to protect and utilize wildlife and natural habitat in a sustainable way.
Share with us your experiences, comments and recommendations. Send emails to wildlifemgtsociety@gmail.com OR moyotrust804@gmail.com