Why are lions killing us? Human–wildlife conflict and social discontent in Mbire District, northern Zimbabwe

Abstract

An emerging perspective on Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) in Zimbabwe is that increased authoritarianism in governance has enabled elite capture of wildlife resources and silenced local people's voices. This paper qualifies this perspective, showing how ordinary people continue to raise their concerns about local governance. In the Mbire district, people's interpretations of an upsurge in lion attacks on livestock and people in early 2010 took on a dimension of social commentary on the evolving governance arrangements in the district and beyond. Beneath an apparent human–wildlife conflict lie complex human–human conflicts about access to, and governance of, wildlife resources. Interpretations of the lion attacks built on two distinct epistemologies – a local religious discourse on spirit lions and an ecological one – but invariably construed outsiders as the ones accountable for local problems. This construction of outsiders is also a salient feature of Zimbabwean political discourse. Local voices thus constitute a widely understood discourse of protest.

An assessment of human–wildlife conflicts in local communities bordering Chewore and Dande Safari areas in Mbire District, northern Zimbabwe

“…The above findings support similar results in Mbire District, northern Zimbabwe (Matema & Andersson, 2015) and in the Greater Khumaga, Botswana, (Mayberry et al, 2017), which show that complex HHCs over wildlife management lie beneath HWCs.…”

“…The foregoing was complicated by the fact that the day-today running of the CAMPFIRE programme had evolved into one that precluded ordinary members from meaningful participation. have also been reported in other studies (Balint & Mashinya, 2006;Mapedza & Bond, 2006;Matema & Andersson, 2015;Muyengwa & Child, 2017). Lack of participatory decision-making related to CAMPFIRE has also been reported in other studies (Balint & Mashinya, 2006;Gandiwa et al, 2013;Mapedza & Bond, 2006).…”

“…The snaring of wildlife provided fodder to the views of the conservation authorities who argued that those injured or killed by wildlife could have been involved in poaching(Jani, De Wit, & Webb, 2019). This assumption resulted in conservation authorities' failure to react on time to lion attacks which caused four deaths in January 2010 after presupposing that the first three Doma victims were poachers(Matema & Andersson, 2015).The HWCs documented above were underlain by complex human-human conflicts (HHCs) between various stakeholders with divergent wildlife management goals(Figure 1). This was compounded by the failure of the authorities to expeditiously respond to reports of problematic species.…”

Protected area staff and local community viewpoints: A qualitative assessment of conservation relationships in Zimbabwe

“…For instance, many local people were evicted from their former areas of habitation when most PAs were created[3, 4] and were further prohibited from accessing natural resources that were fenced inside the established PAs [5, 6]. However, wild animals within PAs often roamed outside park boundaries, destroying crops and killing livestock and sometimes people [7–10]. The establishment of PAs was reinforced through protectionist conservation policies, later known as the ‘fences and fines’ approach or ‘fortress conservation’ [11, 12].…”

My cattle and your park: codesigning a role-playing game with rural communities to promote multistakeholder dialogue at the edge of protected areas

“…However, like any other efforts to protect the environment, they are often associated with conflicts between local actors (Wittmer et al 2006), including illegal hunting (Rowcliffe et al 2004), human-wildlife conflicts (Dublin and Hoare 2004, Guerbois et al 2012, Dickman et al 2014, Lyamuya et al 2014, Chitakira et al 2015, Constant et al 2015, Matema and Andersson 2015, coercion and violence toward local populations (Duffy 2014), and the symmetrical, sometimes violent, protest of local populations to conservation policies (Newmark and Hough 2000, Orlove 2002, Stern 2008. Protests are fueled by past and present social violence experienced by people living on the edges of protected areas.…”