Elephants terrorising new farmers (Zimbabwe) 

Sunday News

April 18. 2009

Elephants are wreaking havoc and threatening a good crop that new farmers got this year in some parts of the Midlands province, it has been learnt.

New farmers from Ruby Block and Woodend Ranch told Sunday News this week how they had been spending sleepless nights in a bid to prevent the jumbos from destroying their crops.

“We are spending nights out in the fields because we fear the entire crop might be wiped out by these marauding elephants. It is the only option we have that could help us at the moment,” said Mr Innocent Sibanda from Ruby Block.

Other farmers also said they were using fires to chase away the elephants.

“We gather bundles of long dry grass that we light up when the elephants appear late in the night. We have heard that elephants are scared of fires and usually when we light up the fires, they get scared and run away,” said Mrs Gladys Ndlovu from Woodend Ranch.

Mr Arnold Ncube also from Ruby Block said farmers were worried that the jumbos would destroy the entire crop if nothing was done by relevant authorities.

“I am scared that despite the fact that this was a good season and almost everybody is looking forward to a good harvest, we now have the problem of elephants. I am worried that our fires might not be strong deterrents to drive away these elephants and one day they might overrun these efforts,” he said.

The problem has persisted over previous seasons and continues to bedevil the helpless farmers.

The area where the farmers were resettled runs alongside former safari areas and these elephants also consider it to be their natural habitat.

As the elephants move around in search of food, the newly resettled farmers are always the victims. 

According to some of the farmers living in the area, melons are the main enticement that draw these elephants to venture into human territory. The villagers said that the crop was a favourite diet for the animals

According to the farmers in the affected area, the elephants come from the adjacent CAMPFIRE area that runs parallel to the land where they were resettled.

The human-animal conflict is one problem that National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority has acknowledged exists in Zimbabwe and happens to be a big challenge that all stakeholders need to seriously address.

CAMPFIRE projects that are run in Zimbabwe were designed to directly involve local communities in the management of wildlife while they also derive direct benefit from the exploitation of those natural resources within their vicinity.

Efforts to get comment from the Director of National Parks and Wildlife Dr Frank Mutsambiwa proved fruitless as his phone number was not reachable.