Conservation

Poachers turned good, with the help of COMACO’s poacher transformation. 

Local chiefs and other traditional leaders assist COMACO with the names of local hunters who hunt illegally and COMACO approaches them with the promise of a better life if they surrender their guns and take part in a training program that offers them new, alternative livelihoods skills.  With the inputs and markets that COMACO can offer, the impact grows each year as more and more hunters, now totaling over 600, join the ranks of reformed poachers who have downed their guns for a better way of life.  Over 20% of these poachers once hunted elephants.  No longer is this hunting pressure threatening elephant numbers in Luangwa Valley.

If I had better skills [than hunting] to pass on to my sons, I would.

Thompson Tembo made a living by killing elephants and has spent two prison terms for poaching wildlife.  He grew up learning his skills from his father, who also had no other skills.  This is the legacy of poaching, often from father to son or uncle to nephew.   COMACO has interview all the hunters it trains and in almost every case, hunters explain that if they had better skills to pass on to their sons, they would.  The sad reality is that no one has ever cared to really understand their problems of poverty and lack of formal training.

Thompson was among the first recruits into the poacher transformation program and he soon realized the enormous mistake he had made by wasting so much of his life hunting wild animals for other unscrupulous trades to benefit from.  He now has realized the important friendship between COMACO and his family.   With over 30 bee hives and the new crops that he grows, Thompson makes far more money today than he did as a poacher and he is safe from the many dangers that a life as a poacher brought to him and his family.

Training a poacher to adopt new skills and become connected to COMACO’s markets does take time, on average 2-3 years, and requires an investment of about $350 per poacher.  With an average of 4 animals killed per year by a typical poacher and with law enforcement costs averaging over $800 to arrest and convict a single poacher, the transformation is a great deal for Zambia and for the people who might be tempted to adopt his livelihood.