All stakeholders who include wildlife producers, professional hunters, safari operators association of Zimbabwe ,CAMPFIRE Districts, Wildlife Civic society groups and Zimbabwe Conservation Task force , are being called for an urgent meeting at Zimparks HQ AT 10:00AM on the 4th of August 2015

http://www.zimparks.org/index....-and-monitoring-fund

The link doesn't appear to work.

try it now-
repasted it and it worked

Thanks. I'm sure they'll get a ton accomplished in that meeting.

Isn't it tomorrow?

your are correct--
forgot
it is about 6 hours away-
just antsy

Well, it should have started 3 hours ago.

This mornings meeting was well attended, members from both hunting and photographic operators, press, national parks senior staff and some independent guys from scientific sectors and a few NGO's.

ZCTF "Johnny Rodrigues " was nowhere to be found.. Shows you how much he cares about the industry, just goes to show how unpopular he is in local conservation circles.

Not a huge amount achieved, but moving in the right direction. A few irate operators who operate on the boundary of the park, as all hunts suspended, including some guys in the field hunting already.

ALL hunting areas in and around the park has been suspended until further notice. It was said and parks agreed, a few unruly elements have caused and are responsible for this crisis, causing everyone operating legally to be tarred with the same brush.it was unanimously agreed that the offending operators / professional hunters involved be prosecuted and charged where they have transgressed any law .

In our opinion these illegal lion off takes occurred in the gwaai conservancy areas, if anything this area should have been suspended to conduct investigations etc.not a blanket suspension .

Mixed messages as usual from national parks, they claiming government has suspended the hunting in these areas. With national parks being the regulatory body, it would be them who would be tasked to remedy this situation. Director General could easily have made this call, and advised his minister, giving the facts and reason etc, but they national parks said it was not their call, and they had been tasked to map the way forward, hence this meeting was called.

Parks were taken to task on the issue of client confidentiality. Members agreed once a offender has been convicted in a court of law, by all means disclose this personal information.but until such time that occurs details should remain confidential and privy to relevant authorities.

Quota transfer - national parks re-iterated this is "illegal ".. And has been stopped with immediate effect. A positive move long overdue. Independent Conservation and industry experts reiterated the need to regulate and police existing regulations effectively, rather than bringing more regulations in as a result of the crisis.

A commitee has been set up with representation from various stake holders within the industry, to formulate and map the way forward, in consultation with national parks. All in all parks have agreed to more of an open door policy, so let's see moving forward from here. They cannot afford to lose the much needed business from foreign hunters.

There was no mention of extradition of either client in these hunts. We think that rhetoric is most probably political if anything, but still damaging to our industry, as future clients may be hesitant to come to Zimbabwe . These concerns were stressed in strong terms to the national parks Director General aswell.

Thank you for taking the time to keep us in the loop. Very frustrating situation.