A Conservation Victory: Over the Past Three Years, No Elephants Poached in Mana Pools National Park

With our support, the Bushlife Conservancy has been working tirelessly to curb poaching in Mana Pools National Park and the surrounding Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. Thanks to this hard work, they recently announced that Mana Pools National Park has been free of any elephant poaching incidents for three years.

Mana Pools National Park and World Heritage Site is one of Africa’s most renowned game-viewing destinations. It’s here that the floodplain of the Lower Zambezi River turns into a broad expanse of water after each rainy season attracting myriad wildlife as the flood recedes. 

Mana Pools National Park is the last national park in Africa where visitors can still walk unescorted among big game.

These 2,500 square kilometers of river frontage, islands, sandbanks and pools, flanked by forests of mahogany, wild figs, ebonies and baobabs, is one of the least-developed national parks in Southern Africa. 

This is also the last national park in Africa where visitors can still walk unescorted among big game, encountering painted dogs on the hunt, elephants standing on their hind feet to access the tastiest leaves, and the occasional armored pangolin. 

However, the Zambezi Valley has historically been plagued by rampant elephant poaching. Twelve thousand elephants have been poached in this area over the past ten years, and by 2014, elephant numbers had decreased 40% from 18,000 to 11,500.

"In 2008 and 2009 it was really bad. Poachers would put cyanide in trees targeting elephants, but when that was too slow they'd poison the watering holes. On one occasion a pack of wild dogs, which are an endangered species, eight elephants and a number of other animals were killed at a poisoned watering hole. That really brought it home that we needed to up our game. It wasn't just a case of listening out for gun shots and tracking poachers down anymore, you've got to be proactive and be there to prevent them getting to the watering holes. Thankfully, with the hard effort we've put in with Zimbabwe national park rangers, we've curbed that." - Nick Murray, director of the Bushlife Conservancy, as told to BBC.

Bushlife is run by conservationists Nick and Desiree Murray. The organization’s operations cover the Lower Zambezi Valley, an area of 10,000 square kilometers. Bushlife works in close coordination with Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife personnel to help patrol remote areas, identify, detain and arrest poachers, monitor prosecutions and sentencing, and recover and rehabilitate stolen wildlife. 

"At this rate it means the elephant population here will increase by 5% per annum," says Nick Murray.

Mana Pools rangers during training.

Before Global Conservation and Bushlife Conservancy stepped in, a small team of poorly-paid and ill-equipped rangers was tasked with patrolling the entirety of this vast wilderness. In recent years, rangers have sometimes gone 3-6 months without a paycheck. Now, Global Conservation’s support has funded ranger patrol rations, fuel, and vehicle maintenance, enabling Bushlife to deploy rangers on anti-poaching activities in the Mana Pools, Sapi, Nykasanga, Rifa and Marongora areas. Global Conservation has also provided a Thuraya Satellite Network and Galaxy S8 smartphones to improve communications among ranger teams and for data collection while on patrol.

Regular patrolling and presence of rangers has been a big deterrent to poachers. There have been at least four cases where early warning by informants has kept poachers out of the Lower Zambezi Valley. Bushlife operates two vehicles with intelligence officers and funds covert operations with fuel, informant payments, and other operational costs. This year, a pangolin was recovered, rehabilitated, and returned to the bush. A pangolin trophy and python were also recovered. A total of ten arrests have been made so far this year, and two poachers were convicted for nine years each after being caught trafficking ivory. Two tusks were recovered. Another poacher was arrested for illegal possession of ivory, and one poacher was apprehended with snares.

Tusks confiscated from a poacher.

Bushlife’s work is complemented by the work of our other partner, the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF), to whom we provided a $20,000 grant for anti-poaching ranger training last year. IAPF also oversees the Akashinga Rangers, an all-female team that aims to protect a network of 20 former hunting reserves in the Zambezi Valley by 2025. Earlier this year, an Akashinga team conducted a sting operation that netted approximately 225 pounds of confiscated ivory. One person was arrested for illegal ivory possession. They also intercepted an ivory deal in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, which resulted in the recovery of two large tusks and an arrest for trafficking ivory.

Elephant Poaching – Lower Zambezi: 2016-2019

Thanks to the efforts of our rangers and investigation teams, elephant poaching in the Lower Zambezi has declined every year since 2016. 

2016:      70+ (5.8 per month)

2017:      28 (60% decrease from 2016)

2018:      18 (36% decrease from 2017 and 76% from 2016)

2019:      7 (Down 90% from 2016)

2020:      0

2021:      0

2022:      0

Good relationships with and investment into local communities widens the intelligence network and operational footprint across the region. Between Akashinga and our work on special investigations, there have been over 200 arrests made since 2017, helping to drive an 80% reduction in elephant poaching across the entire Lower Zambezi ecosystem, home to one of the largest remaining elephant populations on Earth. 

Despite fears that poaching would increase due to the Coronavirus pandemic, our partners have been able to maintain their zero-poaching streak in Mana Pools National Park. Fewer tourists can lead to increased poaching, as more poachers are able to enter parks undetected. Usually, 7,000 tourists visit this area each year, generating over $2 million in revenues, but those visitation numbers have dropped dramatically during the last 6 months.

Tourism numbers in Mana Pools National Park have dropped substantially due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the illegal market in ivory was banned in China in 2018, the black market continues to thrive, with a kilogram of ivory selling for as much as US$2000.

Global Conservation has five primary goals in supporting Global Park Defense in Mana Pools and adjacent areas:

1. Deployment of Global Park Defense systems and communications for all park rangers.
2. Achieving ‘No Cut, No Kill’ within the park by increasing arrests and jail sentences.
3. Increasing the size of Mana Pools National Park to protect adjacent high biodiversity areas by 30-50%.
4. Doubling core wildlife populations for endangered indicator species in five years.
5. Training of park rangers on Global Park Defense technologies and systems for rapid response and targeted patrolling.