We have been coming across terrifying news about Zimbabwe for some time now.

Their economy is in melt down at an official rate of 200 million percent. The unofficial rate of inflation is apparently several billion percent! It’s completely incomprehensible what that means – basically cash is worthless.

The government has been printing money, well its not really money, it’s money that has an expiry date of 6 months – this is what is what is driving inflation.

I was shown a 100 billion dollar bill – the largest note (at least for now) and it has already had ten 0’s lopped off it! It’s worth about 30 Kenya shillings, and four of these notes will buy a loaf of bread. But there’s no bread to be found. The cash economy does not work – people are bartering or using US dollars.

I asked my colleague who lives in Zimbabwe how people are surviving, on TV they look ok, dressed in clothes, they don’t even look hungry.

“The sad truth” she said, “is that the media is controlled. People are not surviving. People are going home and dying in droves. Ashamed, humiliated and miserable. The child mortality rate in Zimbabwe is lower than in Somalia, a country that does not even have a functioning government”. That says a lot.

With such enormous human tragedy, few people are reporting on another tragedy, the raping of the wilderness. In some places starving local communities have invaded protected areas where they are wrecking destruction on once pristine wilderness. The poaching of wildlife has now stripped the country of between 70 and 90% of it’s wildlife. Hundreds of thousands of trees have been chopped down. Private conservation areas have been the hardest hit, and it is exacerbated by a policy decision to feed the large military force Production on farms has collapsed and people have resorted to wild food. But one of the main cause of wildlife devastation is the hunting fraternity (tourists) and the Zimbabwean military.

According to this article on the Times Online “Tourists pay tens of thousands of dollars for permits to bag the Big Five (elephant, buffalo, lion, leopard and rhino) on private land, but safari operators have reported encounters with professional hunters and their trophy-seeking clients in the Hwange and Victoria Falls national parks, and tourists have heard shots fired and seen carcasses. The government denies the claims. Last week, Dr MZ Mtsambiwa, director-general of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, insisted “no trophy hunting takes place in national parks”, adding that men seen with hunting rifles in protected areas were professional hunters engaged to train park staff in elephant culling techniques.
Poaching is also on the increase – 27 black rhinos have been slaughtered this year – and Zimbabwe’s national parks authority has given orders for more than 60,000lb of bush meat to be issued to staff every month, as a supplement to their wages.”

In the last few weeks, WildlifeDirect has been asked if it can help provide support towards wildlife rescue costs – basically saving the lives of animals caught in snares in the protected areas. Here’s a conversation I recently had with someone on the ground.

Q. We’ve heard distressing news about the poaching. With the recent developments in the government, has it eased up, what is the poaching situation now?

A. The poaching is horrendous and there right at the moment seems to be a free for all. It most certainly is not getting better. At least 75% of our wildlife was on private land and now that that has all but gone there is a serious problem. Elephants are being culled left right and center, even in Parks.

Q. Culled, poached or hunted?

A. All three if the truth be known

Q. By whom?

A. Officials, starving people, hunters. The starving people are the ones at the end of the scale as they do not have what it takes to poach an elephant.

Q. Is it safe for you to tell things as they are or do you still have to be extremely careful?

A. We have to be extremely careful as we are on the ground and working with the people in the different areas, if we are too out spoken there we have a huge price to pay in what we are doing. Being an NGO we have to be really careful as they have only just lifted the ban on NGO working in Zim

Q. How can we help?

A. There are two elephant calves with snares but the mothers will need to be darted first before anyone can get to the calves. It will cost US $300 for each for drugs alone. There are a 1000 cases such as this in Zim right now!!!

The elephant my friend was talking about is baby elephant had previously lost its trunk to a snare and now has a snare on it’s leg. The infection has caused the skin on its leg to sag. It will die unless rescued soon.

And it’s not only elephants that are affected. Rhinos, hippos, lions, buffalo, antelopes, you name it are being snared indiscriminately and dying by the thousands. National Geographic raised concern about this more than a year ago here. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature have warned that the breakdown in law and order has reversed 10 years of conservation gains especially on rhino conservation. The official website of the Zimbabwe Wildlife Conservation Task Force talks of’ horror stories and has pictures too horrible to reproduce here.

While it might seem callous to care for these individual animals at a time of such huge human suffering, saving the wildlife in Zimbabwe may be one of the most valuable assets that could help accelerate the country’s economic recovery.

Our Zimbabwe based bloggers, Lisa Hywood at the Tikki Hywood Trust on Zimbabwe7
And Peter Lindsay and Rosemary Groom on the Zimbabwe Wild Dogs are unlikely to tell you anything on their blogs that could get them into trouble. Both projects desperately need funds and we urge you to consider making contributions to their work which is continuing despite the near impossible conditions.

Other friends in Zimbabwe speak of a conservation crisis due to the decimation of wildlife. Hopefully the situation will begin to recover if only the power sharing agreement between Mugabe and Tsvangirai could stick. We will try to bring you more news and pictures in coming weeks and months and we will begin a cause to raise funds specifically for wildlife rescues in Zimbabwe.