Community-Driven Conservation Services
In mid-2020, in a targeted response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating impact on the tourism industry, as well as the concerns over the potential for significant increases in poaching, CSL partnered with the Zambian Carnivore Program to launch 2 new innovative community-led conservation initiatives: Community Game Drives and Community Clean Sweeps. These initiatives were designed to engage communities in conservation services, support household income and ensure a consistent presence of ‘eyes and ears’ in the National Park and surrounding Game Management Area (GMA) to deter would-be poachers.
Both initiatives aim to directly involve communities in localised conservation services while supporting households during a time of extreme uncertainty. The first of their kind in the Luangwa Valley, these initiatives have been a clear success and we are now integrating them into our regular annual activities under CSL’s Community department.
Community Game Drives
Introduced in July 2020, The ‘Experience, Enjoy, Protect’ Game Drives pay for professional safari guides to take people from communities living alongside South Luangwa National Park on game drives in the park.
With support from partners on the ground we’ve been able to include a wide range of people aged 5 to 85 from 5 chiefdoms, including village headmen and women, school children, home-based education caregivers, conservation students, local business people, craft workers and Community Resource Boards.
In 2020 and 2021 a total of 3,300 people aged between 3 and 90 participated, with 58% never having experienced a Game Drive before. During an unprecedented period of almost zero tourism in the Luangwa Valley, a total of 100 out-of-work guides and 8 small car hire companies benefitted from over $25,000 of income invested into local livelihoods through vehicle hire and guide payments.
Community Clean Sweeps
Our Community Clean Sweeps are a 5 to 6 person community team headed by a Wildlife Police Officer or CSL Community Scout, who conduct daily patrols searching for and removing deadly wire snares that threaten the lives of so many animals in South Luangwa.
In 2020 and 2021, we supported 620 Community Clean Sweeps with 2,734 community members who recovered a total of 636 snares, 44% of the total snares recovered from patrols in 2020 and 2021. In the first year of Community Clean Sweeps, no snared wild dog, giraffe or buffalo were reported for the first time in 15 years!
Not only have these activities helped prevent injuries and fatalities for wildlife across the South Luangwa Valley, they have also supported community livelihoods through earnings for participants. In 2020/2021 over $43,000 in participant payments was ploughed back into the community during a time of extreme uncertainty.
