PATROL - VOLUME 10

Fence Sitting

Landscape conservation is more important than the fate of individual species but is the idea of human-wildlife coexistence always possible, and at what cost?

Meat and Fish Poaching on Lake Kariba (7-minute Video)

Professional hunter Pete Fick was a game ranger in Zimbabwe’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife in the 1980s and was stationed on the shores of Lake Kariba in the Chete Safari Concession. Every year, Pete helps the department with meat and fish anti-poaching operations in the region for a couple of weeks.

Patrolling Smarter, Not Just Harder

To maximize patrol effectiveness, understanding how and where poachers work is essential. Systematically collected, large-scale information on that is sparse, especially in East Africa. But, a recent study by Rija and Kideghesho (2020) in the Serengeti ecosystem of northern Tanzania provided some such knowledge.

Different Snaring Tactics (5-minute Video)

John Laing from Guides Against Poaching explains how poacher syndicates have their own poaching “concessions”.

These syndicates rely on suppliers to provide the material for snares. Every poacher has his method of setting up a snare by which he can claim any animal caught in it as his; a calling card, if you will.

In anti-poaching operations, catching poachers is the first prize but disruption of poaching through snare sweeps is critical.