318 Sport hunting of elephant in Zimbabwe: a case study of Kanyurira Ward in Guruve districtThe purpose of CAMPFIRE was to provide communities with an incentive to
conserve wildlife by treating it as a resource from which they could benefit.
It was therefore decided, as a first step, to confer ‘Appropriate Authority’
status on rural district councils under the Parks and Wild Life Act of 1975, thus
enabling them to manage wildlife resources on behalf of the communities
they represented. This allowed them to benefit from a variety of wildlife-
based activities. The councils, however, were granted this status on the
understanding that they involved ‘producer communities’ in the management
of wildlife and that they passed on a substantial portion of the financial benefits
of wildlife management to these communities. Producer communities are those
that are in direct contact with wildlife, bear the costs of wildlife damage, and
take primary responsibility for managing wildlife (Murphree 1993).
Since 1989, 36 rural district councils throughout Zimbabwe have been
granted Appropriate Authority. Approximately 16 of these districts can be
considered wildlife producers, i.e., they are able to generate income from
wildlife activities. More than 90% of wildlife revenues have been earned from
the lease of sport hunting rights to commercial safari operators. Of this revenue,
over 60% is directly attributable to one species, the elephant (Bond 1994;
1999). Although rural district councils are not legally required to devolve the
management of wildlife to producer communities or to pass on the financial
benefits, they invariably follow a set of principles contained in the CAMPFIRE
guidelines developed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife in- These guidelines recommended that at least 50% of the gross wildlife
revenue should directly benefit the communities that manage wildlife.
(Murphree (1997) argues that CAMPFIRE was initiated by a strategic compromise
between devolutionists and centralists.)
Evidence suggests that CAMPFIRE has slowed the rate of habitat loss and
that its benefits have been greatest in areas where communities are small,
homogenous, and living in a distinct territory (Bond 1996). Bond (2001) has
found a clear inverse relationship between human population size and areas
of wildlife habitat; in other words, lower human population densities translate
into higher wildlife populations. While difficulties persist within the programme,
CAMPFIRE’s incentive-led conservation model has resulted in substantial
development and conservation benefits in some areas. The most notable and
frequently quoted example is Kanyurira Ward in Guruve District (Lynam, 1993;
Nabane and Matzke 1996; Murphree 1997), the subject of this case study.
In the next section we examine the human and physical geographic features
of Kanyurira Ward that make it suitable for sport hunting. Production to
consumption activities are described in the following sections, namely, the
management of wildlife, the hunting of elephant and the marketing of the
product—the hunt itself. Based on a review of these activities, some concluding
remarks are made in the final section.
THE STUDY AREA
Kanyurira Ward, which is also known as ‘Masoka’ in the literature, lies in the
Dande Communal Land of Guruve District, approximately 200 km north-west
of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare (Figure 1). Bounded in the south by Doma Safari18sporthunting.P65 318 22/12/2004, 11:05