Wildlife, livestock, people and ‘pests’ in southern African transfrontier conservation areas:
problems and prospects for multispecies systems.
David H. M. Cumming
Percy FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and
Tropical Resource Ecology Programme, Biological Sciences, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe .
Fourteen transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs), varying between 2,000 to 400,000 km2 in area, are
under development in southern Africa. Many of these areas include not only state protected areas and
private or community conservancies, but also communal land under traditional small-scale agropastoralism. As a result, conflicts between people and wildlife occur in the form of crop raiding by
large herbivores, losses of livestock to predators, and the transmission of diseases at the interface
between wildlife, livestock and people. Elephants and lions in many of these areas occasionally kill
people.
The wildlife-related problems faced by small scale, mostly subsistence, farmers living on the edge of
protected areas within TFCAs are not trivial. The species primarily involved include elephants,
hippo, buffalo, kudu, bushpig, baboons and large carnivores. During the height of the cropping
season farmers may spend nights attempting to keep elephants out of their fields, but can still loose an
entire crop in a night. Livestock have to be herded during the day and confined to bomas at night but
even then animals are lost to lions, leopards and hyaenas. Loss of a cow or a goat can affect a
household’s ability to purchase food at the end of the dry season or to meet school fees. Mitigating
measures to protect crops, such as electrified fences to protect fields, the use of chilli pepper barriers
and beehives, have achieved varying levels of success. Protection of livestock at night can be
achieved by using appropriately constructed mobile bomas that also serve to create nutrient hotspots
in croplands or grazing areas.
TFCAs aim to facilitate the movement and migrations of wildlife across larger landscapes by
establishing corridors and removing fences, which raises disease control issues at the wildlifelivestock-human interface at local, national and international scales. Several diseases are involved.
The most important of which is Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), which is transmitted from wildlife to
livestock with serious impacts on beef exports to lucrative markets in Europe and North America.
The primary wild host of FMD is the Cape buffalo - a species that is also of prime importance to the
sport hunting industry and to financial returns from wildlife to local communities living with wildlife.
Given the problems of human-wildlife conflict and disease management, what are the prospects for
people, livestock and wildlife at the interface in TFCAs? Can one farm in a zoo? Are alternative or
compensating livelihood options available if wildlife is maintained outside of strictly protected areas?
Most TFCAs in southern Africa are located in agriculturally marginal lands suited to extensive animal
production. The region’s comparative advantage lies in its charismatic wildlife rather than in beef
exports. However, livestock are an important component of rural livelihoods. The ecological and
economic potential and prospects for multispecies animal production systems that combine both
wildlife and livestock in southern African TFCAs will be examined in the light of existing humanwildlife and disease management conflicts.
(483 words)