POACHING CAN BE REDUCED

Gordon Fakude, Facilitator

A former poacher, exposed to environmental education, has turned into an ardent conservationist, and believes poaching can be drastically reduced.
Born in KwaNgwenya adjacent to Mkhuze, he began poaching in his teens with friends, regarding this as an adventurous rural pastime. He attributes the reserve’s high poaching levels to poverty and poor relations between conservation authorities and neighbouring communities.
He attributes the low poaching incidence in neighbouring Phinda to major efforts to cultivate good neighbourly relations, including priority with jobs and helping build social infrastructure like classrooms. He says Phinda - which has won awards for these - is held in high local esteem compared with Mkhuze, regarded as a reservoir of forbidden resources communities were unjustly dispossessed of.
The former poacher proposes game reserves choose labour intensive methods, enabling unskilled and semi-skilled employment. This underlines the role poverty plays: more than 80% of reported cases in Mkhuze is associated with snares which implies most poaching is not commercial (like rhino horn and ivory).
He has also has a proposal - for which he is seeking funding - for environmental education of his former peers in poaching. He was lucky, he says, that when he was almost finished school, an EZKNW officer taught them the value of conservation to communities. After matric he was employed by Phinda where he went on several training courses that helped him get his current job with a private tourism operator.
He says he is pleased conservation areas were now cultivating good relations with neighbours, a shift in thinking and conduct which will reduce poaching.