320 Sport hunting of elephant in Zimbabwe: a case study of Kanyurira Ward in Guruve districtArea and in the west by Chewore Safari Areas, it covers an area of over 400
km^2 (Cutshall 1989). Settlement, consisting of about 250 households, is
concentrated along the alluvial soils on the banks of the Angwa River. This
area, which is enclosed by a solar-powered electric wildlife fence, consists of
a residential area (8 km^2 ) and fields for cropping (10 km^2 ). The remainder of
the ward (382 km^2 ) is virgin savannah woodland that is maintained and managed
as wildlife habitat (Taylor 1998). Whereas residential stands, gardens and fields
are de facto ‘owned’ by individual households, woodland and wildlife are held
in common. (Communal lands are legally held in trust by the president for the
people living in them. Although members of the community have the right to
change the use of the land, they are not allowed to sell it.)
Residents of Kanyurira have traditionally derived their living from
small-scale dryland agriculture, supplemented by foraging and subsistence
hunting. Kanyurira experiences a long dry season from April to November and
a wet season from December to March. The mean annual rainfall recorded at
Angwa bridge, 15 km north-east of Kanyurira, is 725 mm (n = 15, CV = 34%)
(Lynam 1993). The low and erratic rainfall patterns make agricultural production
precarious and crops often fail. As a result, households remained dependent
on government drought relief programmes for food before the inception of
CAMPFIRE. Apart from the vagaries of weather, income from agriculture was
limited by the distance to markets and the poor condition of roads. Crop
damage from elephant and buffalo was significant. Since cattle cannot be
kept due to the presence of tsetse fly, some households rear goats and other
small livestock.
The vegetation of the wildlife habitat area has been described by Taylor
(1993), who grouped 14 different vegetation types into i) riverine and alluvial
vegetation, ii) dry deciduous forest, iii) Colophospermum mopane, iv)
Terminalia communities, and v) mixed mopane-miombo communities. He
suggested a close association between these vegetation types and the soils in
the area. As nearly 170 km^2 (40%) of the total area lies above the Zambezi
escarpment, the elevation of the area has a considerable range: from about
400 m in the Angwa River valley to 1,120 m at the top of the escarpment
(Lynam 1993).WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT
Campfire
In the past, the quest for survival led the people of Kanyurira to hunt and
forage collectively. It has been estimated that the annual average harvest of
wildlife was more than 40 kg of dressed meat per person (Murindagomo 1988).
Traditional hunting not only had practical connotations, but also spiritual ones.
While hunting was necessary to feed families, especially during droughts or
the winter when grain reserves fell, the skills of the hunter were also admired.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that subsistence hunters usually belonged to a
few families that had a tradition of hunting.
Traditional subsistence hunting inevitably brought the people into conflict
with the government’s wildlife authorities, who harassed and arrested18sporthunting.P65 320 22/12/2004, 11:05