Providing a safe refuge
for elephants and
other wildlife of the
Lower Zambezi National Park
in Zambia

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Operations Report 2004 

PREPARED FOR CONSERVATION LOWER ZAMBEZI BY IAN STEVENSON
~ OPERATIONS MANAGER ~

 

2004/2005 was a year of change for CLZ. Although not fully completed CLZ officially moved into its new premises on January 28th, 2004. The first group of school children arrived at the new Environmental Education and Training Centre on November 5th, 2005 and the many smiling faces made the last year of building all worthwhile. Environmental Education is now one of CLZ’s main focuses.

NORAD (Norwegian Aid) played a major role in financially assisting ZAWA with operations in 2004. Although CLZ remain very much involved and assist ZAWA wherever possible within the organisations means, with NORAD’s input CLZ now play a reduced (yet still active) role in the protection of the Lower Zambezi National Park and surrounding areas.

 

New Operations Base and Environmental Education/Training Centre

CLZ commenced officially operating from its new base on Jan 28th, 2004. The new Operations Base, Training Camp and Environmental Education Centre has been a massive undertaking and all agree it has become a very useful asset to the organisation and the Lower Zambezi Area.

The new premises is the operational centre for CLZ’s assistance to ZAWA in the protection of the LZNP and surrounding areas and is also the heart of CLZ’s new Environmental Education Program (EEP). CLZ employed Ernest Chingaipe to run the new EEP in Oct 2004 and the program commenced operation in November 2004. Well done Ernest and welcome to the team. The centre has been designed to be multifunctional and able to cope with operations, training, education, workshops, meetings and Lower Zambezi Safari Guide exams. It is hoped that in 2006 it will also include a training facility for Zambian Safari Guides.

 

The following is now completed and functional;

Visitors/Conference/Administration Section comprising of:

• 4 x two person tents with en-suite

• conference/ dining area

• 2 x visitors’ toilets

• Office with solar/generator/inverter electrical system that runs the computers and satellite internet and VHF/HF communications network.

• large commercial kitchen to service both visitors’ area & education/training center managers’ house with en-suite and kitchen

• senior staff accommodation for two with en-suite

• 3 phase (4 hp) water pump

• electric hot water geysers in kitchen, tents, managers and senior staff accom

• underground sprinkling system

Education/Training Section built of cement with insulated tin roof and comprising of:

• large dorm building with 4 x rooms each able to accommodate 6 people (total 24)

• 4 x individual rooms with en-suite for teachers/lecturers/instructors/researchers

• large ablutions block with 6 x toilets and 6 x showers

• main education/training building with open class room, library, secure store room and interpretive area

• covered outside eating area

• electric hot water geysers on all rooms and ablutions block

• underground sprinkling system

Workshop and staff section built of cement with insulated tin roof and the workshop area has an electric fence surrounding. The area comprising of:

• large parking area for 4 x Land cruisers and the Mercedes truck

• laundry roomfuel and oil store

• workshop with maintenance pit

• large building supply storeroom

• 40 KVA generator

• 2 x 10,000 litre water tanks

• 2 x food/equipment containers

• quarters to sleep 6 staff with kitchen, toilets and showers

• electric hot water geysers in laundry and staff accommodation

• information/data room and sleeping quarters for ZAWA  

Thanks must go to the Royal Danish Embassy for their continued support, not only for making the construction of the new site possible but also for all the equipment that came with the project and funding.

Safari Guides Training and Exams
During the month of May 2004, CLZ in conjunction with ZAWA ran the annual Lower Zambezi Safari Guides Exams at the new centre and over 40% of guides who sat the exams passed. Due to ongoing in-house training of Zambian guides within Lower Zambezi, CLZ and ZAWA are proud to announce that there are now just over 50% Zambian’s working as qualified guides in the valley - an enormous contrast to 6 years ago when there was not even a handful of qualified Zambian guides. CLZ thank all guides and camps that provided; examiners, instructors, venues and equipment to support LZSG training days and exams.

Around exam time Leanne Edwards organised a Bird Course run by Derek Solomon.

Derek held 32 safari guides and managers captive during a 2-½ day Bird Course. Derek’s course was extremely well received and CLZ hope to facilitate another in the future.

Also during May 2004 CLZ facilitated Medical Air Rescue Service (MARS) Basic and Advanced First Aid Courses for 54 safari guides and managers of the Lower Zambezi. CLZ attempted to include a course for ZAWA Wildlife Police Officers through funds provided by NORAD but unfortunately these were not forthcoming. CLZ has offered to facilitate these courses for ZAWA as they did in 2001 and hope to raise the necessary funds needed.

African Wild Dog Conservation (AWDC)

Throughout 2004 CLZ has maintained its support to AWDC by monitoring the wild dogs of the Lower Zambezi. This support has been in the form of providing aerial tracking and keeping both Kellie and Rhoda Kachali the ZAWA ecologist to Lower Zambezi, updated with the numerous reports of sightings radioed in to CLZ by the managers and guides from the area. CLZ would like to thank all camps that have been actively involved with reporting sightings.

Kellie is very busy in Sydney where she is nearing completion of her thesis that we are all looking forward to viewing. Prior to a Wild dog conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa in late October Kellie managed to squeeze in a 2-week trip to the valley where she kindly shared data and information with both CLZ and ZAWA. CLZ would like to thank Kellie for her time and input and wish her well with her PHD and any possible future research in the valley.

Field patrols and Operations

With NORAD’s financial input to ZAWA and CLZ not being in a position to double fund the same activities, the organisation has undergone some changes regarding its support role to ZAWA in 2004. During 2004 ZAWA received funding for fuel and rations and CLZ could therefore no longer cover all these costs. This has greatly assisted in relieving some of the increasing financially burden on CLZ.

The total number of multi-day patrols that CLZ helped support in 2004 was 71 or 4746 man-days. (see Table 1) As communications was a problem in 2004 (particularly with the ZAWA post at Luangwa Boma) the statistics recorded and shown are possibly not an accurate reflection of the true number of patrols and man-days conducted. 

The majority of long field patrols were conducted inside the National Park however some also covered the Chiawa and Rufunsa GMA’s. On average the patrols consisted mainly of 5 men for 15 days at a time in the field. On any given day, the average number of Wildlife Police Officers on patrols in the field was 13/day. Well done to all the Wildlife Police Officers involved. In addition to long patrols ZAWA also conducted day patrols, river patrols, field investigations and clean-up operations.

Table 1

Record of patrol man/days CLZ has assisted ZAWA with;

Wherever possible CLZ worked together with ZAWA on rapid responses to all gunshots and illegal activity reported. As communications were a problem in 2004, this often resulted in not being able to contact ZAWA HQ in Jordon to seek permission and advice from Command Control, therefore causing long delays in the time it took to respond. CLZ would like to sincerely thank all LZAMU Officers work and efforts in 2004.

ZAWA have unfortunately not yet released the 2004 figures on law enforcement statistics, confiscations and recoveries that are normally shown below and have always given a good indication of the effect that the ongoing ZAWA patrols and operations in the Lower Zambezi Area have with CLZ’s assistance.

ITEM or ACTION	2001	2002	2003	2004
Apprehensions	109	185	272
Convictions	75	104	218
Imprisoned	56	44	48
Fined	19	60	130
Withdrawals	4	16	13
Pending	4	33	470
Acquittals	2	9	7
Total ZMK fined	-	-	29,965,000
Military Weapons	4	22	11
Sporting Rifles	9	4	5
Muzzle Loading guns	154	209	233
Shotguns	10	15	16
Homemade shotguns	9	15	8
Uncategorized Firearms	23	6	0
Ammo	-	-	435
Wire Snares	302	1181	1244
Radios	2	0	0
Pieces of Ivory	30	28	12
Dried Game Meat	2,000 kgs	8500 kgs	2281 kgs
Skins	7	6	1
Live Animals and Birds	0	16	0
Vehicles	1	0	1
Boats	1	0	2
Canoes	0	0	3
Bicycles	0	0	7
Carcasses (impala/duiker)	0	0	2

Elephant Carcasses in the Lower Zambezi National Park

Poached elephants continue to be used as one of the indicators of the LZNP’s level of poaching. With elephant carcasses being so large, the predator and vulture activity, the smell, and the time the carcass takes to decompose we believe most elephant carcasses on the valley floor are found either by patrol teams, operators or the CLZ aircraft. Although this is by no means a completely accurate measure of poaching levels it does give trends and coupled with gunshot reports, snaring incidents, poachers’ camps and drying racks found by patrol teams and the aircraft, and statistics on confiscations and recoveries it does result in a good indication of poaching levels.

Sadly in 2004 14 dead elephants in total were found inside the National Park. Of these, 9 were known to be poached and 5 were recorded as “cause of death unknown”. As there will always be elephants that die from natural causes such as age, disease, drowning or fighting, all carcasses that cannot be confirmed as poached are put in the category of “cause of death unknown”

Of the 9 elephants that were confirmed poached, 8 of them were found on the valley floor in the Musika area between the Chakwenga and Mushenshenshi rivers. The 9th poached elephant was found north of Jeki Plain. This is the first year that no carcasses have been found in the game rich, heavily utilised area between the Chongwe and Mwambashi rivers, which hopefully is an indication that the years of anti-poaching efforts in this area are starting to pay off. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Musika area and efforts must be concentrated in this area to reduce the illegal activity.

Through casual observation while flying anti-poaching aerial patrols it has been noted that elephant movements continue to spread toward and in the escarpment.

Year	2001	2002	2003	2004
Number Poached	16	7	10	9

Poached Elephant Carcasses Recorded in the Lower Zambezi National Park

NORAD funding for ZAWA

On October 1st 2003 the Norwegian Government through NORAD released emergency funding to ZAWA to help with the huge cost involved in policing and protecting a selection of Zambia’s National Parks of which Lower Zambezi National Park was included. The incentive base emergency funding was aimed at covering wages, rations, fuel, communications, vehicles, boats, training, equipment, incentives, operations etc. Since the funding was released ZAWA, through the Warden of Lower Zambezi Area Management Unit has taken over the cost some of fuel/transport and all the rations, which has assisted to relieve CLZ’s increasing financial burden.  However CLZ continue to play a large role in assisting ZAWA with logistics, transport, maintaining the communications network, medicines, operations and aerial monitoring.

The Lower Zambezi Area Management Unit (LZAMU) in 2004 received a new Land Cruiser from NORAD to help with operations, which meant that they now had two vehicles based in Jordan. Unfortunately the second vehicle is getting very old and has become unreliable and with such a massive area to protect/manage there is no way the unit can be expected to cope with only the one new vehicle.

CLZ therefore continue to help with the following free transport allocation to ZAWA to assist with deployments and operations. The cost of the below transport is estimated at $25,500 per year.

Free Transport provided by Conservation Lower Zambezi

·        Vehicles - Land Cruiser 4WD Pick-ups (24,000 kms/year)

Law enforcement in the National Park and Chiawa GMA– 1500 kilometres/month

Operations around the NP - 4 x operations/year @ 1500 kilometres/operation

·        Truck - Mercedes Benz 4WD 15 Tonne Truck (3,000 kms/year)

The truck is a very useful tool on big operations around the park and CLZ have committed to 2 operations/year of up to1500 kms/operation.

·        Boats  - Aluminium Boat with 85 hp  and Banana Boat with 30 hp motor

Wet season movement from Dec to Mar – 15 hours/month.

·        Plane (72 hours/year)

Operational use – 6 hours/month

Aerial Monitoring and Patrols by CLZ’s Plane

The CLZ plane carries out routine aerial anti-poaching and animal monitoring patrols, provided aerial support to patrol teams and air dropped rations and medical supplies to patrol teams when needed. In 2004, three of the nine poached elephants were spotted from the plane.

CLZ’s plane continues to play a vital role in the protection and monitoring of the Lower Zambezi Valley, however during 2004 the plane only flew 52 hrs. Unfortunately this is less then half the annual hours the plane has flown on average over the last few years. This is due to the busy year at CLZ and the fact that ZAWA now request that a Wildlife Officer always be on the plane when patrolling in the park. ZAWA cannot transport the officer and the logistics involved in CLZ collecting an officer is often difficult, time consuming and restrictive, resulting in aerial patrols sometimes not being able to take place.

Darting & Snare Removal
Many poachers continue to use silent and lethal wire snares to poach animals for bush meat. CLZ volunteer, Leanne Edwards and Operations Manager, Ian Stevenson are both trained and have acquired the skills and knowledge for immobilising and assisting wildlife that may be caught in snares. In 2004 with permission from ZAWA and accompanied by a Wildlife Police Officer, CLZ has assisted by darting and removing snares from animals that have been reported by both patrol teams and tour operators.  The following animals were assisted.

DATE	ANIMAL	SEX	REASON FOR DARTING
30-07-04	Elephant	Male	Snare on front right leg
07-09-04	Elephant	Female	Snare on front right leg
08-09-04	Lion	Female	Snare on neck

 Disappointingly on January 18th, 2005 the dart gun was confiscated by ZAWA from CLZ Base Camp and it is currently held in Lusaka, rendering it ineffective for the Lower Zambezi and its wildlife.

Communications
Communications are vital for the effective protection of wildlife and habitat and for the security of the patrol teams in the field. Currently there are 16 VHF base set radios and 21 VHF handset radios based in vehicles, sector offices and CLZ Base to be used for anti-poaching patrols and operations by ZAWA and for communications by the corporate members of CLZ.

Unfortunately the repeaters and solar panels normally based on Chilapila Mountain have become an attractive target for thieves. After repeated thefts in 2003 and 2004 it was believed that the only way to secure them is to place protection on the mountain with the system. In 2004 CLZ offered ZAWA to cover the cost of a porter if ZAWA WPO’s could be based at the repeaters as security. After much deliberation it was decided by ZAWA that lack of water on Chilapila and poor access in the rains would be a problem and therefore the repeater systems should be moved to Mt Kayila. With the help of a helicopter (kindly donated by Conservation Foundation of Zambia) and Riccardo Garbaccio of Kanyemba Lodge most of both systems have been completely pulled down.

CLZ have raised funds (thanks to Conservation Foundation of Zambia and Elefence International) to cover new batteries and solar panels for the repeaters. We are now waiting for the ‘go ahead’ by ZAWA and once received will put the system back in to full use on top of Mt Kayila with security.

In the meantime the ZAWA repeater has been installed at CLZ base camp and the CLZ/operators repeater is also planned to be installed ASAP. Although not near as effective as on a mountain it will/does assist greatly with VHF communications. Apologies to all corporate members for the breakdown of communications through the repeater and we hope to have it back up and running (based at CLZ) in the next couple of weeks. CLZ continue to cover the cost of maintaining the extensive VHF radio and repeater communications network within Lower Zambezi Area Management Unit.

Base Camp are now connected to the world via satellite internet and CLZ would like to thank Alex Barret of Afrikeye for his generous donation.

GIS and Database
Over the years CLZ have recognised the need for a tool to gauge, record, monitor and analyse the effectiveness of the protection and poaching levels and the development in the Lower Zambezi. In 2003 CLZ started working with ZAWA’s Head of Information under the Directorate of Research to design and establish a Geographical Information System (GIS) and Database for the Lower Zambezi National Park and surrounding GMAs.

Andrew Stevenson (Ian’s brother) who has an IT Degree with a major in GIS flew in from Australia with his family and volunteered 3 months of his time to assist CLZ and ZAWA in the formation of the GIS. The GIS grew to be much larger then first anticipated and he has generously carried on with the project from Australia during 2004 and visited base camp again in January 2005. Andrew has put over 1000 hours of work into the impressive system and is due many thanks for his efforts.

It was hoped that selected ZAWA officers would be trained in computers and the GIS, enabling them to input daily data that would be required to fully utilize the system. Unfortunately this does not appear to be a possibility. Although not fully completed, the GIS was delivered to ZAWA Chilanga in January 2005 and we sincerely hope it will be of assistance in managing and protecting the Lower Zambezi Area

Community
The Chief’s advisor Mr Sam Katiyo very sadly passed away at 1120 hours on Nov 04 2004. “Old Man Katiyo” as most knew him, was well respected and will be greatly missed. Although in the end he was weak in body he continued to be strong in mind and we all had/have much to learn from such a man.

CLZ in its limited capacity has been undertaking small community projects aimed at providing assistance to the people of the Chiawa GMA. It is hoped that assistance will generate goodwill and create an atmosphere where conservation can be seen to be of benefit to the local community.

These projects included

·     Distribution of food relief in the form of drought resistant sorghum seed donated by SEEDCO Zambia Ltd. In November all 2336 families in the Chiawa GMA and all officers under the Lower Zambezi Area Management Unit received a 2 kilogram pack of sorghum seed.

·     Providing financial support annually for cultural festivals such as the Kairara Gova traditional  Ceremony.

·     On occasions providing transport for worthy causes within CLZ’s means.

·     Bringing a number of school children from the Chiawa GMA primary schools into the new     CLZ Environmental Education Centre

Spreading the word of conservation through meetings, discussions and audio-visual tools when the CLZ mobile unit visited the Chiawa GMA.

Summary
2004 was a year of both progress and regression. A fantastic new facility have been constructed which can be of huge benefit to the people and wildlife of the area however without good communications with it partners such as the community and ZAWA the centre may not be used to its full potential. Although relations with officers on the ground are strong, CLZ and ZAWA need to work at strengthening their partnership and finding a way forward which will best benefit the people and wildlife of the Lower Zambezi.

CLZ would like to give special thanks to the ZAWA Wildlife Police Officers of the Lower Zambezi Area Management Unit, who continue to put their lives on the line protecting this fragile environment. CLZ would also like to thank all the volunteers for their continued dedication and the operators of Chiawa GMA and the Lower Zambezi National Park again for their invaluable support and assistance to CLZ and ZAWA.

Thanks to all for helping provide a safe refuge for elephants and other wildlife!