ZimConservation

By the South African Hunting and Game Conservation Association

URL: http://www.pacificbreeze353.com/newsletters/index.cfm?y=article&company=17&article=220&nl=64&click=web&subsection=50

Quote from the article “Hunting – South Africa’s shame”

Lawless Zimbabwe provides an even more terrifying example of what can happen without adequate regulation, … Here, poaching in connection with farm occupations is totally out of control. Johnny Rodrigues, chairperson of the Zimbabwean Conservation Task Force has detailed the problem: “Nobody knows how many animals we have left since the onset of the land reform program. I estimate we have lost between 90 and 100 per cent of game on game ranches, over 60 per cent in the conservancies and maybe 40 per cent in our national parks. The new settlers don’t bother with quotas. Continue Reading »

By Randolph E. Schmid

URL: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ipbwIyoEXKd3IP69myt-WU5iAggAD96HHR983

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Earth won’t have to warm up as much as had been thought to cause serious consequences of global warming, including more extreme weather and increasing threats to plants and animals, says an international team of climate experts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the risk of increased severe weather would rise with a global average temperature increase of between 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and 3.6 degrees above 1990 levels. The National Climatic Data Center currently reports that global temperatures have risen 0.22 degree since 1990.

Now, researchers report that “increases in drought, heat waves and floods are projected in many regions and would have adverse impacts, including increased water stress, wildfire frequency and flood risks starting at less than (1.8 degrees) of additional warming above 1990 levels.” Continue Reading »

By Business Reporter, Chronicle

URL: http://www.chronicle.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=1955&cat=8

The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority will this year coordinate the joint management of the Chimanimani Transfrontier Conservation Area, an official has confirmed.

In an interview, the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZPWMA) public relations manager Ms Olivia Mufute said the country signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mozambique to co-manage the Chimanimani Transfrontier Conservation Area.

The Chimanimani Transfrontier Conservation Area includes Chimanimani National Park on the Zimbabwean side and Chimanimani National Reserve on the Mozambicanside. Continue Reading »

By R. W. Johnson

URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5780439.ece

Wildlife experts are alarmed at a dramatic upsurge in rhino poaching in South Africa’s game reserves that may threaten the survival of the creature in one of its last redoubts.

Just 10 rhinos were poached in the whole of 2007, but last year the number reached 100. On Christmas Day alone, 13 rhinos were killed by poachers.

“We’ve always had subsistence poaching,” said George Hughes, a former head of the KwaZulu-Natal Parks Board. “But serious poaching for large game by professionals selling rhino horn or ivory to Far Eastern syndicates is far more alarming.” Continue Reading »

By Antony Sguazzin

URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=a3_IbXTLifbU&refer=africa

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — South Africa, home to the world’s biggest population of white rhinos, declared a moratorium on trading in products made from their horns and will limit hunting of the endangered animals.

The moratorium is immediate, the Pretoria-based Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said today in a statement. Hunters will only be allowed to kill one white rhino a year per person, the department said, compared to no previous limit. Continue Reading »

By Quentin Wray

URL: http://free.financialmail.co.za/09/0220/life/dlife.htm

Should SA waters be solely for endemic fish? Or should trout and other “foreign” species be accommodated, too?

This question is behind a long-running, simmering conflict between the fly-fishing community and nature conservation officials, especially those from the fairest Cape. The bureaucrats want trout consigned to the dustbin of SA history, alongside so many other vestiges of our colonial past, and the fly-fishers, not to put too fine a point on it, don’t.

Public pressure through, among others, the Federation of SA Fly-fishers (Fosaf), seems to have got the authorities to back off a bit from this programme of ichthyological xenophobia. There are signs a compromise could be reached soon, which will allow fly-fishers to continue to enjoy their sport while ensuring the sustainability of other fish species.

Putting the science and myriad details of the competing arguments aside for now, this mutual-benefit approach is best. In some primitive cultures, conservation efforts were supported by the immense spiritual or physical sanction (demons or death, basically) imposed on poachers and other abusers of wildlife. This approach is denied modern administrators, who must live with the fact that their efforts will be doomed unless people can derive some economic benefit from leaving their environment intact. 

Without this, people, in justifiable desperation about how they are going to feed their families, will simply exploit the resource with scant regard for its sustainability. This has led to the situation on the Vaal River, where fragile yellowfish populations are hoicked out the water and eaten. It is also the logic behind pulling communities near the Kruger National Park into tourism ventures with established players, and explains why the once spectacular Wankie Game Reserve in Zimbabwe has been turned into a giant butchery-cum-grocery store. Continue Reading »

By Absalom Shigwedha (13 February 2009)

URL: http://allafrica.com/stories/200902130621.html

In a world where the environment and natural world and its wildlife are under increasing strain, there is fortunately an awareness that what remains of wilderness area have to be safeguarded now, if future generations are to know and experience them.”

SADC countries – it seems – have fallen in love with the trans-boundary conservation concept and at the moment 14 transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) have been identified in the region as most viable for development. Continue Reading »

URL: http://www.gssa.co.za/postgrad-opportunities/msc-sustainability-in-communal-socio-ecological-systems/

MSc: Sustainability in communal socio-ecological systems, School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand 

Two MSc bursaries (R30,000 each for two years) are available for ecology/environmental science students to participate in a multi-disciplinary research project titled SUCSES: Sustainability in communal socio-ecological systems. The aim of the overall project is to gain a better understanding of the dynamic relationship between society and the environment at multiple levels in a rural region of South Africa. Such analysis is necessary for identifying, understanding and responding to threats and opportunities for ecological sustainability and human well-being in these systems in order to inform appropriate policy. The project is based in the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance Site, in the rural district of Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa.

The MSc bursaries will each address one of the following research questions:

Project 1: What are the spatial patterns of ecosystem composition, structure and function in a communal savanna 

Project 2: What are the patterns of land cover resilience to shocks (e.g. drought) and stresses, (e.g. resource harvesting) in different landscape units in a communal savanna landscape over the last two decades, and what are the implications of this for the provision of ecosystem services?

Deadline for applications: 27 February 2009. Contact: rcrd@global.co.za.

URL: http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=1738&cat=5

EDITOR — It is pleasing that the Govern-ment has decided to return management of urban water supplies to local authorities. 

Without intending to insult anyone, the fact is the Zimbabwe National Water Authority was an experiment that went horribly wrong.

Zinwa failed dismally and they have a level of culpability in the outbreak of epidemics such as cholera.

We all know that the sanctions on the country severely crippled the operations of many service providers, but it would be an understatement to say that Zinwa was not proactive enough in managing its affairs. Continue Reading »

By Karin Kloosterman

URL: http://greenprophet.com/2009/01/31/6468/africa-land-grab/

As African nations sell and lease its land, and birthright, to the world’s super-powers, and arguably “dangerous” countries like Saudi Arabia who support Islamic fundamentalism, we are seeing a brand new kind of neo-colonial land-grab, and it scares me.

I’d reported on Galten’s Jatropha seeds for biofuel here, and also on the Israeli conglomerate Ormat, Evogene and Leviev in Namibia planting castor seeds for biofuel, and came out thinking, naively perhaps, that land development for biofuels in Africa was a beautiful thing: Israel doesn’t have much arable land, and the projects create jobs for Africans as well. Continue Reading »