Elephants, birds wreak havoc in Matobo

Chronicle Reporter
April 24, 2009



MIGRATORY elephants and quelea birds have almost wiped out crops in a majority of fields in most parts of Matobo District leaving “starvation staring villagers in the face”, the Member of the House of Assembly for Matopo South, Mr Gabriel Ndebele has said.
Speaking in a side interview during the commissioning of a classroom block in Dzembe village, the legislator said the situation was so bad that Government intervention would be needed to control the animals and feed villagers.
“Long ago, helicopters were used to scare away elephants and birds. Now that this is no longer being done, the creatures have become difficult to control. Elephants are laying to waste any field that they get into, while the birds have ravaged all small grains, which include sorghum, millet and rapoko,” he said.
He said National Parks personnel had offered to establish a base in Matobo District to help villagers contain the problem animals at the beginning of the year but nothing has been done up to now.
Mr Ndebele said the district, which is drought prone, had experienced good rains for the first time in five years but the hard work by villagers in the fields had been wiped out by the elephants and the birds.
A number of villagers in the district said the elephants that were destroying their crops were not from around the district as they had strange characteristics like rafted spoors.
“I think these elephants come from Namibia or Botswana because they do not look like the ones we are used to in the district. They are not even afraid of people. You can shout until your voice gets hoarse but they will ignore you and go on to destroy your crops,” said Mr Brian Ndou, a Ward 4 villager.
Other villagers think that the elephants could have come from as far away as Hwange National Park.
Another group of villagers said the quelea birds raided their fields in large numbers and did not take long to go through their crops.
“They come in big groups that sometimes bloat out the sun and we have a hard time trying to control them,” said one of the villagers.
There was a general consensus that food aid would be needed this year in the district. Most villagers appealed to the Government and nongovernmental organisations to resuscitate food-for-work programmes and help them to deal with the menace of the wild animals.
The situation is so bad that the Matobo Rural District Council has tabled the problem for discussion at a full council meeting.
The issue of elephants has become a national problem, with large herds from Hwange National Park destroying crops in most parts of Matabeleland North Province.
The Park, reportedly has a carrying capacity of 14 000 elephants but now has an estimated 100 000 elephants. Officials at the park are in a quandary, as they cannot cull the animals because the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) prohibited African countries from killing elephants or exporting ivory in 1989.
The population of jumbos in Gonarezhou National Park is said to be now more than three times the park’s carrying capacity.
Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia have over the years campaigned vigorously to have the ban temporarily lifted so that they can get rid of their mounting stocks of ivory and now unmanageable elephant populations.
Countries like Kenya, Mali, Ghana, Chad, Niger, DRC, Togo and Sierra Leone, who have small jumbo populations, have however, continued to campaign vigorously against lifting the ban.