Our work is focused on promoting sectorally integrative land-use policy and practice in KAZA. Across much of KAZA, the conservation of wildlife is often in conflict with livestock production; infectious agents that can be carried by wild animals, particularly foot and mouth disease viruses, have made it difficult or impossible for beef farmers to enter the world market, due to restrictions based on the livestock’s proximity to wildlife. However, the current solution—vast fencing to separate livestock and wildlife—interrupts wild animal migration pathways and endangers population survival. Our work focuses on facilitating rural livestock value chain processes that ensure beef is biosafe for international sale—eliminating the historical dependence on fences and thus allowing for cross-sectoral harmonization. The ecological integrity of KAZA depends on restoring/maintaining six “wildlife dispersal areas,” also known as habitat corridors— areas that must not be blocked by fences or other obstacles. Our pilot work in KAZA has the potential to be applied across other TFCAs in SADC. We have already developed the definitive guide on our new approach, which was recently adopted by SADC as an official guideline for the entire region (see URLs below). Our barriers to scaling-up are primarily related to our own current capacity— signficant policy "heavy lifting"  has been done, given our development of concrete protocols and a successful 2015 effort to change international WTO/OIE rules for beef trade based on our pilot work. If we can scale-up our efforts and undertake more training-of-trainers and engagement with national governments, we believe we can help resolve one of the most intractable land-use and development conundrums the conservation community has long been stymied by. PDFs of our key programmatic work products are freely downloadable at:

http://wcs-ahead.org/workinggrps_kaza.html

Also see:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/of-animal-germs-and-pa...

https://wildlife.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/2018-09/wildlife.tbed12...

https://meridian.allenpress.com/jwd/article/55/4/755/442072/THE-GLOBAL-B...