DM Monitoring
Hwange, Zimbabwe: For months, the idea of her crops being unable to pass another night in the field unperturbed while she dozed indoors rattled Flora Mangwana so much. These days, the 40-year old farmer sleeps in a makeshift hut outside her home in Siyalwindi, northwestern Zimbabwe.
For more than a dozen years now, herds of elephants from the nearby Hwange National Park invade her family plot every other night, devouring the planted maize before it reaches maturity.
That has often left Mwangana, her family’s breadwinner, scrambling to find other food sources to feed her family of six. Ahead of harvest this April, she is worried about a repeat scenario.
“The elephants are coming to our fields in large numbers and we are not going to harvest much this season,” she said. “Every year, we don’t harvest much because of the elephants. This year, there was little rainfall and elephants are still becoming a big problem, destroying our fields.”
The Hwange National Park is the biggest wildlife reserve in the southern African nation. In 1928, it was declared a game reserve. Stretching over 14,600 square km and located in the eastern part of the Kalahari Desert, a low rainfall area, it is home to more than 100 mammal and 400 bird species.
During the dry season, the competition for food and water intensifies, resulting in conflicts among the animals. For years, some of these animals, the elephants, have also been straying into residential areas around the park. The invasion has led to loss of crops on farmland and lives across the country.
Things have worsened as the elephant population in the game park increased over the years to more than 50,000, far beyond its holding capacity of 10,000, Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management (ZimParks) told the BBC.
In 2020, there were more than 50 injuries and 60 deaths due to growing wildlife-human conflict, according to ZimParks’ website. It was an increase of more than fifty percent from the previous year.
In search of good pastures and water holes, the villagers drive their livestock into the game park. Thomas Tshuma, 47, a cattle herder has encountered elephants while tending to his livestock in the game park.
“Each time we go into the game to herd our livestock, the elephants are harassing us, attacking and chasing away our livestock at watering holes and pastures,” Tshuma told Al Jazeera. “The grazing lands are now scarce and we have to look for better pastures to feed our animals.”
