How can rural people in southern Africa increase their incomes, while at the same time conserving wildlife? Will this be possible with climate change and increased drought? These were questions explored in detail by veterinary scientists and conservation experts at a workshop hosted by KAZA, the FAO, and the AHEAD (Animal & Human Health for the Environment And Development) in Victoria Falls on 3 & 4 November.

KAZA, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, spans five countries: Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and aims to conserve southern Africa’s wildlife and habitat through nature based tourism, while at the same time bringing increased income to local residents, most of them farmers.

Five years ago, a treaty to establish KAZA was signed by the five member states, and since then, conservationists in Europe, the USA and elsewhere have asked: What is KAZA delivering? When are the fences that separate the countries and hinder the movement of wildlife, particularly elephants, going to come down?

The practical aim of the workshop on commodity-based trade of beef in the KAZA area was to work towards harmonizing land-use policies so that wildlife and livestock can co-exist. The workshop followed a three-day symposium, which considered how to integrate conservation policy between the five countries, and how to alleviate poverty.

Since the 1930’s, the erection of 10,000 kilometres of fences – the distance from Windhoek to Berlin – has led to the loss of one and a half million large mammals in southern Africa. The fencing was erected to separate cattle from wildlife, especially buffalo, a carrier of foot and mouth disease.

Dr Russell Taylor, who coordinates KAZA initiatives for WWF, explained that politicians have only recently realized the comparative economic advantages of wildlife as a land use. Workshop presenter Dr David Cumming, Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town and Technical Advisor to AHEAD, pointed out that ninety percent of the animal biomass in southern Africa consists of cattle, which account for only two to three percent of GDP, gross domestic product, in the SADC states.

On the other hand, nature-based tourism, which relies upon wildlife and only ten percent of the biomass, brings in five to fifteen percent of GDP – a percentage that is rising. Nature-based activities now contribute more to the region’s GDP than forestry, fisheries, and agriculture combined.

Cumming went on to say that fencing across the region leads to habitat fragmentation. The challenge is how to safeguard the interests of the livestock farmer as well as the habitat vital for wildlife. The answer, promoted enthusiastically by Professor Stephen Osofsky, of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and the AHEAD Program, is commodity-based trading in beef, which does not rely upon the separation of cattle from wildlife in order to make the beef acceptable for export.

Under a commodity-based trading system, which is now officially acceptable to the OIE (World Organization for Animal Health), beef could access high-value markets. Meat from cattle which have been managed under agreed protocols and then quarantined before slaughter may be considered safe for trade, provided the country of export has an official foot and mouth disease control policy, and that the meat is de-boned, de-glanded and properly prepared before export.  Veterinary controls are required at every stage of cattle rearing and meat production. These include routine vaccinations and the transport of cattle in disinfected lorries.

What interests conservation scientists is that commodity-based beef trade allows for cattle and wildlife, including buffalo, to co-exist on the land, and for fencing within countries and along national borders to be re-evaluated: some fences may no longer be needed and others could be realigned. Commodity-based trade not only allows for the restoration of wildlife andgrowth of the tourism industry, it should also bring increased income to farmers, including those who do not have access to international markets and can only sell their cattle locally at a fraction of the export value.

WWF’s Taylor went on to say that farmers in southern Africa should be thinking about herding, not fencing. Without fences, herders would be required to guide livestock to grazing and to protect them from predators. This was a theme taken up by Karine Nuulimba, Operations Director of IRDNC in Namibia. Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation is about to create a pilot programme for the integration of wildlife and cattle in Namibia’s Zambezi Region: the geographic centre of KAZA.

Until recently, the Namibian Ministry of Lands and Resettlement had planned seventy small farms, each fenced off, in the centre of Zambezi. This would have cut off many farmers from traditional grazing land, and blocked the migratory routes of antelopes, zebras, buffalos and elephants which move through national parks and conservancies, and across KAZA borders. As well as the small, privately held farms, a large-scale irrigation project was proposed.

What pleases Nuulimba is the capacity of government, in this case, to listen to objections from local residents. Instead of the farms and an irrigation scheme, the Ministry has allowed the area to be leased by a cooperative of 850 farmers, who will graze the land holistically, using herders. This will allow for the free movement of wildlife through the area.

For both wildlife and cattle to thrive, and with them the economic prospects of Zambezi Region and the rest of KAZA, new approaches are critical. Commodity-based trade can help cattle owners outside of the current veterinary cordon areas to earn a better living. At the same time, fences that no longer serve a disease control purpose could be removed, opening-up the key wildlife movement corridors upon which the future of the KAZA transfrontier conservation area depends. Cumming is convinced this is the only way forward. To withstand the effects of climate change on Africa’s savannahs, we have to protect what he calls primary production, which is the grass, bush and trees, from secondary production, which is livestock. The way to do that is to promote herding and not fencing.