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Tyre delivery at Hwange National Park
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF)
April 18, 2006

Earlier in April, we went to South Africa to collect a load of second hand tyres for the vehicles in Hwange National Park which were very kindly donated by Kelvin Shewin of Tyax Trading, Johannesburg and Rolf Steyn of Independent 4 x 4 in Pretoria. Our sincere thanks to Kelvin and Rolf for supplying these much needed tyres.

To enable us to transport the tyres, we were assisted with a 3 ton truck, the use of which has been donated to assist in the Hwange crisis. We are extremely grateful to the sponsors of this truck, Mitsubishi Fuso, Caltex, Safari Centre, Getaway Magazine and Flame Lily Holidays for making this possible.

We returned from South Africa and loaded a further 8 brand new tyres onto the truck which were previously donated by Dunlop Zimbabwe. These were very large tyres and we did not previously have the means of transporting them to Hwange. Our heartfelt appreciation goes to Dunlop Zimbabwe for this very generous donation.

In accordance with National Parks regulations, we took the load of tyres to National Parks Headquarters in Harare for inspection before delivering them to Hwange.

We arrived with the tyres at Main Camp, Hwange National Park on 11th April where they were received by various National Parks staff including the Provincial Warden and Warden Mafuka.

We offloaded the tyres, 45 in total, at the Main Camp workshops because all the vehicle repairs for the whole park are done here and the tyres will be distributed to Sinamatella and Robins as required.

Warden Mafuka signed for the tyres. We found the National Parks mechanics hard at work in the workshops repairing the landrovers. We were told they have managed to get 4 landrovers back on the road thanks to the spares donated by the Hwange Conservation Society (UK). In addition to the tyres, we also delivered 9 x 10metre lengths of chain, a very valuable donation from Columbus McKinnon, Zimbabwe. These chains are necessary for animal rescue operations .

We then delivered the empty truck to The Hide where it will be based. We took a drive through Sinamatella and Robins in our private vehicle which had followed the truck from Harare to Hwange and we found that the water levels in the pans are dropping rapidly now that the rains are over so we are going to have to work hard to ensure that all the pumps are functioning if we are to avoid a repetition of last year's water crisis. We will welcome any assistance with funds, fuel, spares etc. We are also looking into installing windmills at all the pans which will be a huge saving on fuel and maintenance because when the wind is blowing, the windmills will take over from the engines.

Tourists planning a visit to Hwange National Park will be happy to know that the National Parks staff in Sinamatella are hard at work repairing the roads which are showing a marked improvement as is shown in the photo below.

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