WCS Fact Sheet for Zambia: Reducing the Threat of Wildlife Poaching by Offering Economic Alternatives to Local Hunters

Fact sheet #3, 25 November 2003

1. Background

Conventional law enforcement as a way of protecting wildlife is costly and often incites social resistance to conservation among rural communities, especially those who face economic hardships and rely on wildlife as a source of income or food. This especially applies to local hunters, who use their skills of hunting to enhance their livelihood needs, but typically do so without licenses for the animals they kill. Government authorities regard such people as poachers and only those able to afford the costs of acquiring licenses are called hunters. From the local hunter?s perspective, Government favors non-resident hunters, because they can afford hunting licenses, and over-issues licenses to make money or provide political favors at the expense of local hunters? livelihoods. Such perspectives foster continued local resistance to conservation.

Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has studied this dichotomy of terms and views in recent years as a critical need for planning improved wildlife conservation policies in Zambia. These studies revealed this threat to wildlife by local hunters was far more serious than previously realized and helped guide WCS? efforts to pilot a programme that has significantly reduced this threat through economic alternatives. Called the ?Poacher Transformation Programme , it targets known poachers with an offer to learn new livelihood skills, and upon verifiable proof they have stopped poaching, it provides tools and inputs as well as increased market opportunities to support these skills as an alternative to poaching.

2. Local Hunter Poachers: The Threat

A sample of 88 hunters selected by community leaders from Luangwa Valley (n=51), Eastern Province plateau region (n=17) and Lower Zambezi region (n=20) were consulted over a 6 weeks period to obtain a description of their hunting activity. All lived within or close by wildlife areas and hunted on average 29 animals annually without license. This represented an annual loss of 2775 animals and 22% of the hunters interviewed admitted hunting elephants. Buffalo, impala and warthog were the three most common species hunted. WCS current level of knowledge suggest this sample of hunters represents only 30% to 40% of the total local hunters resident in the above areas.

Most preferred hunted species by percentage of preference as sampled from 88 selected hunters
Buffalo	81%		Wildebeest	19%
Impala	63%	Zebra		19%
Warthog	49%	Puku		15%
Kudu	37%	Duiker		15%
Elephant	27%	Bushbucks		14%

Hunters? age averaged 36 and grade 7 was the average level of education, though five had the highest education levels of grade 12. From this sample, 32% had been previously arrested, some as many as four times, suggesting the threat of court convictions was not an effective deterrent. Average income derived from illegal hunting averaged $320, which was biased by 10 hunters who earned over $900. Removing these from the sample, average income from wildlife dropped to $190. Income derived from other sources, mostly agriculture, averaged $166. Combined, these incomes represented a four-fold increase over the average rural household incomes from the sampled areas. Hunting was clearly a desirable livelihood option for those owning a gun and having the necessary skills to hunt successfully.

Distribution of income from wildlife

3. Hunter Transformation: The Response and Results

The economic implications from the above levels of wildlife mortality combined with a better understanding of local hunters themselves generated three important conclusions:

• There was need for an approach that offered viable livelihood alternatives to local hunters to compete with earnings that illegal wildlife markets currently provided
• Local hunters were generally business-minded people with adequate education levels to adopt such alternatives if sufficient levels of support and input were provided.
• Because of their status in the community, local hunters if successful in adopting alternative livelihoods would be a good investment as a role model for the community at large.

WCS initiated a hunter transformation programme with a consortium of partners, namely World Food Programme, Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), Community Resource Boards (CRBs) and US Fish and Wildlife Service. Hunters selected by their respective community leaders attended a 6-month training in seven alternative livelihoods, including carpentry, poultry rearing, bee-keeping and so forth. Upon graduation, hunters signed an oath not to poach for the next six months. They surrendered their guns and in return they received agricultural inputs for the next farming season. Repetitive visits to their area combined with reliable informants enabled WCS to ascertain compliance. Upon compliance at the end of six months, each hunter decided on what set of activities and equipment needs were required to sustain sufficient income not to poach. WCS procured these inputs with a dollar limit of $250 per hunter. Parallel efforts by WCS to increase trade and markets for goods produced by hunters as well as help find employment were key components to building hunter commitment to the transformation process.

Training was intense and required a close teacher - trainee relationship to overcome fears or doubts about the programme and build up confidence to learn and apply their new livelihood skills. From 2001 to 2003, the programme trained a total of 31 hunters, of which 84% demonstrated full compliance and received input support to alternative ways of earning income. Five hunter poachers resumed poaching upon returning home and were disqualified from the programme and one of these was subsequently arrested for poaching an elephant. As a sub-sample, these five had earned an annual income from poaching that averaged $350, which was substantially higher than the sample as a whole. Another 57 poacher hunters completed their training in 2003 and are now undergoing their 6-month assessment for eligibility to receive the $250 livelihood input support.

A combination of seasonal employment (tourism guides, village scouts, wildlife transect counters, community trainers) and various forms of self-employment (carpentry, bee-keeping, vegetable gardening, dry season irrigation farming, goat husbandry, poultry raising) supported through the initial start-up investment have maintained solid compliance to non-poaching by the first 26 transformed hunters. Combining those trained from 2001 to 2003 and adding an additional 60 more transformed hunters to the programme for 2004 and 2005, the projected wildlife numbers saved annually by 2006 will exceed 5000 animals. Unit cost to transform a single hunter poacher is approximately $600. At an annual commitment of about $36,000 from 2004 to 2006, the above projection of animals saved, not counting natural rate of production, is achievable.

WCS works closely with CRBs and ZAWA to ensure the Hunter Transformation Programme is supported by community leaders and that land use plans developed by CRBs create employment opportunities for transformed hunters to reinforce the success of this programme. The private sector could realize as much as an added $1.5 million from this program over the next four years. They too could enhance its chances of success by creating employment opportunities for hunters participating in this programme.

Wildlife Conservation Society is legally registered in Zambia as the Foundation for the Conservation of Wildlife. Email: wcslusak@coppernet.zm (WCS office), wcszam@coppernet.zm (Country Director)