World Bank Plan for Wildlife in Mozambique. (26 September, 1996)

The World Bank has unveiled a bold multimillion dollar proposal to revitalise Mozambique's run-down wildlife areas and to link some of them with parks in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The R36,4 million transfrontier conservation plan involves link-ups between Tembe Elephant Park and Ndumo Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, the Kruger National Park and Zimbabwe's Chimanimani National Park.

The bank - which has been preparing the plan for the past five years in consultation with Mozambican officials, the Swiss Development Corporation and conservation bodies - has stressed that the community-based ecotourism plan is a long-term initiative, intended to set the stage for more significant private sector investments. There would be no forced removals of people, and a central feature of the plan is to create wealth for rural Mozambicans who are among the poorest people in the world.

Apart from the removal of artificial boundaries separating international conservation areas, the plan aims to restore a measure of control in parts which have suffered from uncontrolled poaching and indigenous tree cutting because of the Frelimo/Renamo civil war.

The bank's Mozambique project leader, Rod de Vletter, notes that the wildlife and forestry department is critically understaffed and underfunded. The department receives less than 0,2% of the national budget, with 95% of this money swallowed up by salaries alone. Most staff have not been trained for 20 years. But under a new capacity-building/training scheme it is hoped to employ more skilled staff and game guards and to offer wildlife management training courses in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the African Wildlife College at Kruger Park. Other features include several hundred kilometres of new roads, extra water holes, guard posts and anti-poaching measures.

And instead of forming a centralised blue print, the overall emphasis will be on flexibility and gaining popular community acceptance and support for the fransfrontier initiative. The bank also suggests that a variety of land-uses be considered, combining traditional ecotourism and safari hunting with other activities such as animal husbandry and bee-keeping.

While the boundaries of the KwaZulu-Natal/Mozambique link-up have not been demarcated, a proposal has been made to establish a game pathway joining the Maputo Elephant Reserve with Tembe and Ndumo reserves. This could involve gazetting a new conservation zone along the Futi Corridor and building a veterinary cordon and a game fence to prevent crop damage by elephants.

If the proposal is accepted by the Mozambican government, local people and conservation authorities in KZN, it would be possible for elephant populations to move freely between both countries after being separated by an electric fence since 1989. The second transfrontier area includes the contiguous Kruger National Park and Coutada 16 hunting concession area in Gaza province.

Funding source: Five-year grant to rehabilitate Mozambican parks and pursue link-ups with South African and Zimbabwe game parks.

• World Bank: $5-million (R22,5-million).
• Swiss Development Corporation: $2,6-million (R11,7-million).
• Mozambique Government: $0,5-million (R2,25-million).

Tourism is one of the world's fastest growing industries, second only to oil in terms of revenue generation. At the moment, Africa's share of world tourism is less than 2%. Mozambique currently budgets less than 0,2% of its national budget to the wildlife and forestry department. Own correspondent. Courtesy of the Pretoria News.