Poaching

Illegal, unregulated killing of wildlife in Luangwa Valley generally takes two different forms: snaring and hunting. The first is practiced by people who typically set snares near their village area, often along routes used by wild animals or near the waterholes they come to drink. It is non-selective and wasteful when the carcass is found late and the meat has already spoiled.

A rotting carcass is also an attraction to carnivores and scavengers, resulting in loss of lions, leopards, wild dogs and hyenas that may be in the area. Almost anyone can set a wire-snare, as it does not take an exceptional amount of skill but it does distract someone from more productive livelihoods.

Wildlife scouts when on patrol are always on the look-out for snares. However, they are difficult to find, as they are usually well concealed and occur over a vast range of possible areas suitable for snaring. Snaring wildlife is practiced by thousands of people in the Luangwa Valley and represents a huge threat to wildlife conservation.

Hunting is done with firearms, most often made by local gunsmiths who use? pipes, springs, nut and bolts and other assorted pieces of metal and wood to make what is generally referred to as a muzzle-loading gun. Some hunters have more sophisticated rifles and in rare occasions, a hunter may even own a military-type firearm. Hunters who use muzzle-loading guns can make their own ammunition and this is a big advantage. Gunpowder is made from fertilizer and bullets are fashioned from ball-bearings and heavy-duty bolts. No animal is safe from a muzzle-loading gun, as they are lethal weapons that can take down an elephant, buffalo or eland. Hunting is a skill that is often passed down from father to son as is the gun. Hunters tend to prefer larger animals that can yield more meat per carcass, but when unavailable, will just as well hunt smaller animals like impala, bushbuck and puku.

Animal losses from both snaring and illegal hunting in Luangwa Valley could be staggering and recent aerial survey counts of wildlife in areas where efforts to patrol against illegal use of wildlife clearly substantiate this point and show how quickly areas can become depleted of wildlife. Reliable sources of information collected as part of on-going research into the these threats suggest that in the late 1990?s and early 2000?s, poor, food-insecure farming families set snares 3 to 4 times a year, typically using 10-15 snares per setting, and on average would kill 7 animals annually. With the use of firearms and being more selective in what was killed, illegal hunters averaged killing 23 animals annually and of the over hundred hunters interviewed, at least 12% had hunted elephants.

Law enforcement is expensive and to be effective requires active patrolling by sufficient numbers of scouts year-round in order to provide a serious deterrent to illegal hunters. Surveillance against illegal meat and trophy trafficking is necessary to deter traders who exploit local hunters for low cost game meat for higher-paying markets in urban areas. Estimates on actual costs to sustain law enforcement operations in Luangwa Valley, provided by the Zambia Wildlife Authority, suggest the total cost required to arrest and bring to court a single poacher varies from $2500 to $3500. For a region as large as Luangwa Valley, where the total number of hunters is likely to be well over 1000, reliance on law enforcement as the sole solution to the poaching problem may not be sustainable over the long term. BACK TO TOP