SALE SALE SALE – Elephants, Lions, many other species

Last week the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks), the official government agency responsible for wildlife management in the country, announced that the country’s wildlife was for sale.  

Zimbabwe says it is putting some of the wild animals in its reserves up for sale because of the severe drought that has hit the country.

  It says the country intends to "destock its parks estates" by selling animals to individuals "with the capacity to acquire and manage wildlife" but offers few additional details.

Africa is inthe midst of a devastating drought exacerbated by an epic El Nino weather pattern.  Zimbabwe has be particularly hard hit by the drought which has curtailed agricultural production including cash generating exports while the economy has been crippled by runaway currency inflation.

The region is facing a severe drought that has taken a toll on food harvests. According to UNICEF, 37 percent of households in Zimbabwe are hungry. The dry conditions have "decimated" livestock. In February, the situation prompted Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to declare a state of disaster.

Zimparks claims that proceeds from wildlife sales will be used for the benefit of the remaining animals under their care.  However, when dealing with such a sale in Zimbabwe there is no certainty that the funds raised will be used as Zimparks indicates.

…Ross Harvey, a senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, says that if Zimbabwe had been governed responsibly, there would be no need reason for it to put its wild animals up for sale. “Zimbabwe's economy has been intensively mismanaged since the late 1990s, and the recent drought has had a more devastating effect than it otherwise would have if the economy was in fact being run properly.”

 According to Harvey, “the idea that the sale of elephants would help to assuage the country's economic woes is unworkable.” He notes that there’s no assurance that any money the government acquires from wildlife sales would be earmarked for conservation or drought relief. “In a system where lack of accountability has been baked in over a long time,” Harvey says, “there’s no guarantee that the money would be directed towards those who need it most.”

It is common practice for government wildlife management agencies to sell animals to private game parks both to raise revenue and to reduce over population of certain species. Zimbabwe has sold wildlife before as the current crisis has unfolded. 

Last year Zimparks “sold” 24 elephants ostensible to China for revenue to fund wildlife relief efforts.  However, there is a lively controversy over the actual terms of the sale or even if it was in fact a debt repayment and not a sale.  The distribution of estimated the $1.4 million raised by the transaction is unclear.    

A Zimbabwean woman of Chinese descent, Song Li, has been named as a central agent in the controversial exportation of elephants to China. She is believed to be working in cahoots with powerful Zimbabwean politicians and a cabal of underworld dealers. 

The government has of late been under fire for the capture and sale of baby elephants to China and other overseas destinations. Minister of Environment Saviour Kasukuwere has defended the exercise, arguing that the sale of elephants would bring much-needed revenue to the state coffers. But government has so far failed to divulge where the profits from the sales are going.

Concerned environment activists say the sale of the elephants is shrouded in mystery and benefits only corrupt dealers and politicians.

The impact of Zimbabwe's chronic government corruption and cronyism, decades of financial crisis and years of drought put the country's wildlife in peril.  There are no easy solutions to the situation in Zimbabwe and it would be unwise to expect any actual relief to come to wildlife from this latest sale of animals under Zimparks' stewardship.