Reduction of wildlife threats

The COMACO approach used farmer inputs and assistance with improved farming skills as a basis for farmers to reciprocate their cooperation by surrendering snares or illegal firearms in Luangwa Valley, where the COMACO program has been piloted for three years (2001-2004). This reciprocation was a key basis for removal of snares and illegal firearms, recognized as major threats to wildlife production.

a) Voluntary surrendering of snares and illegal firearms

b) Indices on use of snares. These data assessed trends in snaring to determine whether snares removed by COMACO were being replaced. Indices consistently showed no evidence of snare replacement.

• Percentage households who witnessed neighbors bartering game meat for food (sample size = 252), an average annual reduction of 40%.

c) Wildlife scout assessment of snaring trends for past 3 years. Only scouts resident in the area for five or more years were interviewed:

d) Percentage contrast of safari clients who complained about encountering snares while hunting. Pre-food security intervention (1999) versus post-food security intervention (2003).

e) Survey of 445 randomly selected farmers participating in the food-for-betterfarming
programme on past and current use of snares.

g) Reforming local poachers and illegal gunsmiths

A sample of 88 hunters selected by community leaders 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. 22% of the hunters interviewed admitted hunting elephants. Buffalo, impala and warthog were the three most common species hunted.

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 annual incomes from the sampled areas, which less than $100. Hunting was clearly a desirable livelihood option for those owning a gun and having the necessary skills to hunt successfully.

COMACO has provided a special program of livelihood support to these hunters to offer them skills and inputs to earn income from alternative, legal sources. A rigorous twomonth training course in alternative skills is provided followed by a set of tools and inputs valued at about $250 if participants show commitment to stopping their illegal huntin g.From these 88 hunters, all but five have ceased to hunt as poachers and a third have embarked on income ventures through COMACO-supported markets that sustain incomes comparable to what they had earned as poachers. Another third has found employment and the remaining continue to develop their new skills and income ventures. COMACO has also begun to identify illegal gunsmiths to offer these people a chance to put their skills to legal use by making something other than illegal firearms.One such gunsmith now manufacturers a self-designed treadle pumps for irrigating dry season gardens from village wells.

f) Snare encounter rate per wildlife scout patrol in Chifunda GMA (Core Project Area)
showed a 700% reduction in finding snares on patrol.

Skills taught as part of reforming local poachers include bee-hive making, carpentry,
poultry and goat rearing, dry season gardening, and employable skills at safari camps.

Once verified that a hunter in the program has stopped poaching for 6 months, a
complete set of tools and inputs are provided to support alternative income sources.

Wildlife production

While the above data suggests that COMACO has significantly reduced important sources of wildlife mortality originating from with local communities,they do not answer the important question, ?Has COMACO through its reduction of snares and illegal firearms contributed to increased wildlife production??.Three separate sets of data presented below strongly suggest a significant increase in wildlife production has occurred:

a) Indices based on safari hunting results: hunting results and hunting effort.

Available data existed for three out of five safari hunting areas in the ?core area? to assess hunting success and hunting effort as indicators of wildlife production. A positive slope for success is indicative of increased production of trophy animals while a negative slope for hunting effort suggests the same result. Lion and buffalo were chosen for this analysis because of lion?s sensitivity to snaring and poachers?s preference to buffalo. As shown in the figure below, data confirmed patterns of increased production for each of the three area.

b) Animal sighting trends for scout patrols in Chifunda area

Scouts who patrolled for 7 to 10 days and recorded the occurrence and numbers of selected species while on patrol collected these data. These data, summarized below, show an increase in production for 5 out of 6 species monitored by wildlife scouts in the area. Since safari clients generally harvest only the oldest males in the population for their trophy and relatively few of the species used in this comparison, particularly eland, roan and hartebeest, the increase in sightings of these species provides added relevance to the impact of snare removal by COMACO has had on wildlife production. Waterbuck was the only species showing a decline for reasons not clear from this study.

c) Aerial wildlife census surveys

Aerial wildlife census surveys were flown in 1999, 2002 and 2004 over 7 sampling blocks, covering approximately 4500 km2 of the project area along fixed transects at a sampling intensity of 19%. Species counted for assessing wildlife production were elephant, buffalo, kudu, zebra,eland, wildebeest, waterbuck, puku, hartebeest and roan. Survey results (Table 5 and Figures 6 and 7) showed an overall trend of population increase for 9 of the 10 species. Kudu, puku, elephant,zebra and buffalo had a more widespread increase across the project area with significant increases for 4 to 5 of the 7 sampling blocks sampled. Population increases in roan, hartebeest and eland were least representative of the area surveyed. The frequency of population increase for each sampling block, as measured for each species by a greater than a 20% increase in population estimate from 1999 to 2004,outnumbered population decline by a factor of 1.55. For species considered most abundant in 1999 and least sensitive to sampling area,occurrences of population increases outnumbered population decreases by a factor of 3 to 1.