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ZimConservation Newsletter September 2006
ZimConservation
September 04, 2006

Below are the conservation headlines for the last two months in Zimbabwe. If you visit the website www.zimconservation.com you will notice that the forum section has been replaced by a yahoo group account to make it easier for people to post reactions or comments to recent environmental developments. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zimconservation/join Click here to have your say.

30 August - Angola To Set Up Cross-border Biodiversity Conservation Area.... Luanda, 08/30 - A cross-border biodiversity conservation area called "Okavango-Zambezi", involving five southern Africa countries, will be created soon under the National Strategy and Action Plan on Biodiversity (NBSAP) of the Angolan Ministry of Urbanisation and Environment.

25 August - Kenya: Maasai Mara Among World's Top 10 Tourist Sites... According to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature's website, the game reserve is among the 10 ideal places that tourists should visit this month. WWF ranked it as the fourth best tourist attraction. Located in the southwest corner of Kenya and bordering Tanzania, the reserve, which covers 1,510 square kilometres is considered one of Africa's greatest wildlife reserves. It was gazetted in 1961. Brazil's Amazon Rainforest tops the list with the Great Barrier Reef of north eastern Australia and the Himalayas following closely at second and third positions.The Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA, was ranked fifth, while Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls was sixth.

25 August - DDT makes a comeback in effort to halt malaria... Swaziland // Men in blue coveralls and white surgical masks began their annual trek into the countryside here last week. Methodically, they sprayed one home after another with a chemical most Americans probably thought disappeared from use long ago: DDT.

[Ed: It seems that the US feels that the environmental risks posed by DDT outweigh the benefits - can anyone provide an informed comment?]

25 August - The Eastern Highlands: Nowhere More Beautiful in Africa'.... Our quick trip for this weekend takes us to The Eastern Highlands that was once described by the late Queen Elizabeth of Britain, the Queen Mother, as: "Nowhere more beautiful in Africa" when she visited Zimbabwe way back in 1960.

24 August - Mozambican National Found With Two Elephant Tusks.... Two elephant tusks were found in the luggage of a Mozambican aboard a bus coming into Harare. Wilson Saize Hofise (36) was arrested on August 17 along the Mvurwi-Harare road after being found with the two 50-cm tusks said Mashonaland Central provincial police spokesman Inspector Michael Munyikwa.

23 August - Community-Based Measures Vital to Counter Bio-Piracy.... Recent reports that travellers, posing as tourists, stashed away some wild animals into their bags expose the fact that illegal trade in wild plants and animals continues to flourish and the smuggling boom is proving hard to control worldwide.

21 August - Parks And Arex Embark On Massive Quelea-Spraying... The Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, in conjunction with the Department of Agricultural Research and Extension Services (Arex), has embarked on massive quelea bird-spraying in Beitbridge, an official has said.

22 August - Zimbabwe: Meeting On Resumption of Ivory Trade Delayed... The six-member committee set up by the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and the Zimbabwe Ivory Manufacturers Association to come up with a working document to be used in ivory trade, is still to hold its first meeting, thereby delaying the resumption of trade.

22 August - Zimbabwe's tourism on road to pick up... After experiencing a major recession over the past seven years, Zimbabwe's tourism industry is showing signs of recovery. The most obvious evidence of the pickup is perhaps that the tourist arrivals to the country in the first half of this year increased by 33 percent compared with the same period of last year, which means that more than 1 million tourists visited Zimbabwe during the period.

18 August - South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe open border to animal park...--Kruger NP South Africa (AP) -- The presidents of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe officially opened a new border crossing Wednesday in a small but significant step toward creating the "world's greatest animal kingdom" -- a huge national park spanning the three countries.

17 August - Matetsi Tender Won.... Kanetuta Safaris won the tender to run the Matetsi Unit 3 hunting concession near Victoria Falls after making the highest bid at an auction conducted by the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority in Harare last week.

11 August - Relax With Presidential Elephants... It is normal practice, however, to keep a healthy distance between man and the beast. But there is a place in Zimbabwe where one could connect with elephants, just as one would with old friends.

7 August - Authority to Establish Protective Zone in Park... The Parks and Wildlife Management Authority will soon establish a rhino protective zone in the Gonarezhou National Park in its efforts to curb poaching of the animals.

7 August - Zimbabwe poachers 'kill 9 black rhinos'.... Harare - Poachers have killed at least nine rare black rhinos in a conservation area in central Zimbabwe, the state- controlled Herald reported Monday.

5 August - Recreation Park Slowly Disappearing... The great wild site of Harare, Cleveland Dam Recreational Park, is an incredibly valuable leisure sanctuary now under siege from water polluters, wood and animal poachers, and veld fires.

4 August - Zimbabwe: Zim Donates Black Rhino To Botswana... Zimbabwe yesterday donated a black rhino to Botswana's Khama Rhino Sanctuary in an effort to boost the breeding population of the endangered species in Southern Africa.

22 July - Falls Paradise... As a born and bred Zimbabwean, if someone had suggested to me six years ago that Zambia would become the hottest new tourist destination in southern Africa, I would have laughed at them. We Zimbabweans tended to have a rather dim view of our large northern neighbour across the Zambezi. We saw it as a wild, under-developed, somewhat backward extension of the Congo. True, it had copper mines, and shared with us half of the great river and the majestic Victoria falls, but it wasn't even the good half of the falls. Which helped explain why nearly three million tourists visited Zimbabwe every year until the late 1990s, while most ignored Zambia.

20 July - Beijing goes hunting for a continent's wealth... In the past seven months, Chinese dealers have bought 30 tonnes of ivory from Zimbabwe's Parks and Wildlife Management Authority - representing the tusks of about 2250 elephants.

20 July - Zimbabwe: State Seeks To Ban Cropping That Disturbs Wildlife Management... [The] Government is seeking to make the wildlife land-based policy operational by banning extensive cropping that disturb viable wildlife management in various conservancies in the country. In an interview yesterday, Environment and Tourism Minister, Cde Francis Nhema said the conservation of wildlife was being threatened by lack of knowledge of some people resettled in the wildlife hub areas.

19 July - A Numbers Game: Managing Elephants in Southern Africa... South Africa, July 19, 2006 (ENS) - Southern Africa just had one of the wettest summers on record, turning its usual adobe brown sun-burnt landscapes into verdant green paradises. In South Africa's Kruger National Park, vegetation has grown thick and dried riverbeds have flooded. Wildlife haven't had to wander too far in search of food or water.

19 July - Cocktail of livestock diseases stretch veterinary services... Harare 19 July (IRIN) - Hopes that Zimbabwe could resume beef exports to the lucrative European Union (EU) market before the end of this year have been dashed by a widespread outbreak of highly contagious diseases the veterinary services are struggling to contain.

18 July - Parks Authority Increases Fish Poaching Fines... The Parks and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe has introduced heavy fines of up to $50 million to curb poaching of fish in the country's lakes.

18 July - Land and peace - Where next for land reforms in Africa?.. When white farmers in Zimbabwe started being driven off their farms at gunpoint by intrepid settlers, the country's controversial agenda of land reform was thrust into the international spotlight. But what happens after the news teams leave? An answer to this question is being sought in an ambitious £500,000 research project that is bringing together African researchers and colleagues at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex. Funded by the UK government and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), it will investigate the results of land reform not only in Zimbabwe but also in Namibia and South Africa.

16 July - Vulture numbers are cut to the bone... South Africa's national lottery is claiming an unlikely victim: vultures. Local people - convinced these birds' superb eyesight gives them the gift to see the future - are eating vulture meat to acquire the power of clairvoyance. And they are not alone. In neighbouring Zimbabwe, voters fearful of supporting the losing side in recent elections ate vulture meat, mainly heads, talons, eyes and hearts, believing this would enable them to pick the winning party. Then there has been the rise of traditional medicines, for which vulture parts are highly valued, as well as soaring cases of poisoning and shootings by starving farmers in East and West Africa.

14 July - Zimbabwe Conservation Taskforce update ... Since September last year, we have been concentrating on solving the problems in Hwange National Park. With the help of various donors including the Hwange Conservation Society (UK) and the SAVE Foundation of Australia and the assistance of Friends of Hwange, WEZ and National Parks, we hope to have the park fully operational by the end of this month (July).

12 July - Safari Operators Raise Concern Over Hunting Quotas Allocation... Some safari operators are up in arms with the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority over the allocation of hunting quotas which they allege are not being conducted and awarded in a transparent manner.

7 July - Resettled Farmers Harm Timber Industry... Zimbabwe's timber industry is under threat from resettled farmers causing fires in woodlands or illegally cutting down timber from plantations, the Timber Producers Federation (TPF) said this week. TPF chairman, Joseph Kanyekanye, said the resettled farmers were illegally harvesting timber and destroying trees through fires in timber plantations when clearing land for farming activities, leading to the collapse of the industry.

1 July - Hwange Update from Zimbabwe Conservation TaskForce.... Since September last year, we have been concentrating on solving the problems in Hwange National Park. With the help of various donors including the Hwange Conservation Society (UK) and the SAVE Foundation of Australia and the assistance of Friends of Hwange, WEZ and National Parks, we hope to have the park fully operational by the end of July this year. This is an ongoing project and we will continue to try and raise funds for fuel for the water pumps etc. In order to avoid a repetition of last year's water crisis, we need to supply 10 000 litres of diesel per month to the park to keep the pans full of water. Any assistance towards this will be greatly appreciated.

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