ZAMBOA: Zambians poachers trade guns for food security

Record ID: 376832

  • Title: ZAMBOA: Zambians poachers trade guns for food security
  • Date: 1st March 2006
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) EX-POACHER GODFREY CHIRWA SAYING: "(I am) Handing these firearms to the honourable minister and (I) am assuring him to say 'from today I would never go back poaching anymore'." (SOUNDBITE) (English) WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY COUNTRY DIRECTOR DALE LEWIS SAYING: "(We are) beginning to see the real fruits of having better agriculture, more food secu
  • Embargoed: 16th March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Environment / Natural World
  • Reuters ID: LVA6305USNY8SKK8FV2Z76N0T638
  • Story Text: Former poachers in Zambia are exchanging rifles for a new start as conservation-minded farmers and honey producers.
    In a symbolic gesture combining both conservation and sustainability, residents of eastern Zambia on Monday (February 27) surrendered hundreds of guns to take advantage of an opportunity to improve food security and ensure better access to markets.
    At an event once considered unlikely in a landscape of grinding poverty, illegal hunting, and environmental degradation, community members from the Lundazi and Chama District, handed over more than 750 illegal firearms in what organisers referred to as "a vote of confidence for an increasingly successful model for natural resource management and development".
    Called COMACO (Community Markets for Conservation), the program is a partnership including Zambian governmental agencies, WCS, the World Food Program, and growing number of local communities who have forsaken the poaching of wildlife for ecologically sound agriculture practices and animal husbandry techniques.
    The program works to address the needs of poor, food-insecure families through a combination of agriculture, natural resource management, and markets.
    Farmers that adopt environmentally friendly land management and farming practices like conservation farming, composting and crop rotation are rewarded with higher prices for their products.
    With increased income, some families and communities are then able to diversify their food production with honey production, fisheries, and other activities.
    Since its inception in 2001, COMACO has increased its membership to more than 2,000 producer groups in the Luangwa Valley, for a total of more than 23,000 farmers. In addition to turning in their firearms, participants have also handed over approximately 33,000 wire snares.
    WCS estimates that taking such large numbers of guns and snares out of circulation has saved no less than 4,000 animals per year from illegal hunting in the region.
    The program has already transformed the lives of desperate people who once had no other option but to hunt wildlife.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register