Emergency supplies being unloaded at Mana Pools

Parks lodges are basic, but comfortable

One of Mana's old elephant bulls visits the drinks table!

A plea from a Zimbabwean conservationist who knows what life is really like for those protecting wild places.

Conservationist Dick Pitman chaired and directed the Zambezi Society for some 25 years and his life, together with that of his wife Sally, is still inextricably linked to the wild places of Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley. Dogged in their joint determination to do what they can for their beloved national parks, this couple recently undertook a rescue mission that even they found shocking. In this frank discussion about what life is really like in one of Africa's most beleaguered countries, Pitman shares his experiences.

Back in January this year, my wife Sally and I went to Zimbabwe's Mana Pools National Park in the Zambezi Valley. We always try to visit early in the rainy season to witness the park's incredible transformation from grey-brown, dry-season dust to emerald-green tropical paradise. Also, Sally had produced some posters based on the code of conduct for visitors that she has been developing with the Zambezi Society, and we wanted to place copies in Mana's lodges and campsites. The warden was delighted with the idea and accompanied us as we drilled holes and screwed the posters into place. When we'd finished, we invited him back to our own lodge for tea and biscuits. After a while, talk turned to the problems he faced, together with his staff of 50 or so rangers, administrators and labourers.

 "We have no food," he said simply. "And no fuel to go and buy any. And even if we had, our salaries are worthless. Nobody wants Zimbabwe dollars." To say I was shocked is an understatement.

Mana Pools, let us remind ourselves, is a World Heritage Site and one of the crowning wildlife jewels of the Zambezi Valley. I have been intimately involved in its conservation since 1980. In fact, the Zambezi Society, which I chaired and directed for 25 years, was established to help combat the destruction of Mana Pools by a hydroelectric dam in the Mupata gorge, about 65 kilometres downstream. We'd written and submitted, via government, the application to UNESCO for World Heritage status which, we felt, was not only justified in its own right, but might also offer the park some protection against any future attempts to destroy it. After that, I went head-to-head with a multinational oil company, hell-bent on using the cheapest available methods of oil exploration - in this case, a bulldozed network of tracks for seismic 'thumper trucks' - throughout the Zambezi Valley. They finally saw the advantages to their reputation that would result from spending a little more cash on helicopters to plant light explosive charges instead (and possibly the disadvantages of having agencies like Greenpeace camped on their US doorsteps if they didn't).

There have been plans to plant sugar on Mana's riverbanks and mine uranium on its borders; to build hotels by the river and hunt elephants in its thickets. One foreign consortium even wanted to turn over the entire Mana river frontage to irrigated agriculture. All these threats have come and, if not gone, then at least been held at bay by a small band of dedicated Zimbabwean conservationists. But, I never dreamed that the biggest threat we would face would be the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar, encapsulated in the warden's plaintive statement: my salary will buy half a loaf of bread.

(And to think we'd been fretting about putting posters up for tourists&)

The lesser of the many evils arising from this situation is the shooting of impala and other species by park staff for food. Mana's populations can withstand this relatively minor offtake, as long as staff members avoid the nyala and bushbuck. (Zimbabwe's park staff members have long enjoyed a 'ration quota'; we may not like it, but it's something for quiet negotiation and strict regulation, not theatrical press outbursts.) In today's circumstances, though, there's a serious danger of an exponential escalation, through the trading of this meat for food and fuel with dealers outside the park, to full-blown commercial ivory and meat poaching.

Alternatively, the situation for park staff could become untenable and lead to the abandonment of their posts, with all the consequences that would entail. The current minor incursions by Zambian fish and wildlife poachers would probably turn into a full-scale invasion. First to go would be Mana's wonderfully placid old elephant bulls that meander past our braais and pause to pick up the acacia pods without so much as an irritated flap of an ear.

Or the authorities might simply turn the whole place over to sport hunters of varying degrees of integrity. The ancient elephant bulls might, possibly, be spared, but at the cost of their becoming wary and aggressive. Something would have been irretrievably lost, not least the ordinary citizen's ability to experience both Mana and its delightfully intrusive wildlife.

When I thought about it later, my sense of fiddling while Rome burns - putting up wilderness posters in a park with so many other problems - diminished. A revived inflow of environmentally aware tourists would solve many of these problems at a stroke. But starving staff members can't wait for the revival to happen. Nor could Sally and I. We have formed our entire lives, not just careers, around Zimbabwe's magnificent wildernesses and wildlife, in particular those of the Zambezi Valley, such as the Mana Pools and Matusadona national parks. We weren't about to sit back and watch them fall apart. It's why we stay here, and it's something our overseas friends don't understand. Well-meaning friends often call us from the UK, Australia or New Zealand, offering us sanctuary. "We really wish you'd get out of there" they say. "We're so worried about you."  Yes, and do what, exactly? Drive a taxi and dream of Mana, as so many Zimbabwean exiles are doing in total security - and total boredom?  More than a few have come back.

We're fine, we tell these friends, and indeed we are, barring the minor personal irritations of sporadic electricity supplies, nonexistent mains water and a useless currency. And those fade into irrelevance when places like Mana are so deeply embedded in our psyches, laden with so many memories and so much symbolism, and suffering so much hardship. There are many like us, taking part in efforts to hold back the tide of destruction and to save what we have, pending better times. We - and they - take the risks involved in economic and political instability and balance them against the immense personal satisfaction to be gained from shaping our lives in accordance with overarching personal goals.

In case this all sounds like bravado or self-glorification, I should also say that we - or I, at any rate - spend much of my life being scared halfway to death. My habit of scanning internet news sites first thing in the morning  doesn't help. But it still beats driving that taxi in Perth.

It took Sally less than a week to raise some US$13 000 from a foreign donor to finance three month's worth of food and fuel for both Mana Pools and Matusadona. Shortly afterwards, we trucked the first load - a tonne of maize meal, sugar beans, cooking oil and other items - into Mana in convoy with Stretch Ferreira and Flo Coughlan of Goliath Safaris.

The tracks were wet and muddy after recent rains, and Mana's euphorbias and grasses had grown hugely since our previous trip. The warden and staff were almost pathetically grateful when we arrived at the park's Nyamepi headquarters and, as a thunderstorm loomed, hurriedly unloaded the sacks and boxes into the station's empty storeroom.

Sally and I lingered for a day or two, savouring the miraculous explosion of butterflies and newborn impala lambs, baby warthogs and hippo calves, watching the curtains of rain marching down from the hills and the basking in rainbows at sunset. We drove back to Harare on a cool, cloudy morning after a heavy overnight storm. It was slow going; rainwater had cut great gullies in the access track and we slithered and slid through the sand and mud.  Somewhere along the way we came across a truck from the country's tsetse fly research station, which lies within Mana near the foot of the Zambezi escarpment. The crew waved us down. They'd run out of fuel and had been stranded for 24 hours, they said. Could we please give the driver a lift to civilisation, so that he could organise a rescue mission? He loaded several grimy sacks and boxes into the back of our Land Cruiser. The car slowly filled with the unmistakable smell of game meat and biltong. We didn't ask questions, because we knew the answers already. The tsetse guys are as badly off as the park staff. But we can't feed the entire country...

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Is there any way in which people outside Zimbabwe can help? There certainly is.

Book into one of Zimbabwe's superb national parks for a week. A revival of tourism is about the only hope for these protected areas, if they aren't to be turned over to hunting, or - the worst-case nightmare - degazetted altogether. Seen from the inside, Zimbabwe is still a remarkably friendly and nonviolent country. Sally and I have driven to Mana Pools National Park and Kariba Dam every six weeks or so for the past few years without meeting anything more than the occasional freelance extortion at police roadblocks. We'd just as happily drive to Hwange National Park, Victoria Falls and Gonarezhou National Park, if the occasion arose.  The tourism infrastructure is still remarkably intact. The park's lodges are - understandably - rather shabby and ill-equipped after years of neglect due to financial constraints; but still offer a degree of comfort in some of the loveliest places in Africa. And there are several collaborative private-sector initiatives getting under way, designed to revive the fortunes of the many photosafari camps and tour operators that have survived the past 10 years of decline. 

We have several overseas friends who refuse to come here on principle, because they feel it would help to prop up a corrupt regime. But they don't understand that such boycotts don't affect wealthy politicians: they hurt ordinary people like the Parks Authority field staff who, whatever the sins of their superiors, are still working to conserve wildlife as best they can. Above all, we tell them, nothing could be more short-sighted than sacrificing the nation's wildlife on the altar of politics. Zimbabwe's parks are global assets, and deserve to be treated as such.