Rhino dung, Snatch, Ego’s and Fences

So I know I said we would discuss what we have been up to and why, so here is a slight angle on the WWF Black Rhino Range Expansion Project which Wildlife ACT helped with at the end of last year. A couple of our conservation volunteers were there helping out, the most noticeable volunteer task being that of designated dung collector - which required a hand to be shoved up a tranquilised rhinos’ bums to get dung samples. However, this post has little to do with dirty hands, rhino dung or tracking rhino. One of the components of the project is to encourage neighbours to drop fences to accommodate Black Rhino. A question I wanna throw out there is the following:

              Why do so many game reserves still have fences up between one another anyway?

Are these fences which have become ‘natural boundaries’ as they have 'always been there' or are they there as no-one has even thought it important to remove them? Dare i say Egos play a role...

Some typical responses our volunteers might get when enquiring as to why fences are still up between neighbouring reserves includes....

                                 "Well they don't have a lion population like we do..."

                                     "We have way more animals than they have..."

             or the classic "It's on the cards and should be happening in a year or two...".

That last one is a favourite of mine, as it always reminds me of the response of the character Turkish to the guy cooking sausages for him and Tommy in the movie Snatch –

Turkish: "What's happening with them sausages Charlie?"
Charlie: "Two minutes Turkish"
...little while later Turkish asks again: "What's happening with them sausages Charlie?"
Charlie responds "Five minutes Turkish"
To which Turkish says to himself: "It was two minutes five minutes ago..."

Seems to me like many fences have been coming down in "two years time" for the last five years...

This doesn’t mean there are no fences coming down between neighbours or that no-one is trying. In fact some of the more significant fence droppings have occurred in the last while. This has been between giant reserves, as orchestrated by the Peace Parks Foundation, or between smaller sized reserves and cattle farmers, as initiated by WWF and Space for Elephants Foundation. Often there is a need for an incentive for fence dropping to occur. WWF realised this, using donor populations of Black Rhino as a carrot to land owners to make bigger tracts of land to accommodate this flagship species. However, is it necessary to have such a large carrot? Surely land owners can appreciate that even smaller species, not to mention biodiversity (had to use that word in here somewhere!) in general, thrives under larger tracts of land, allowing for dispersion, growth and ultimately, to the benefit of the landowner, less intensive management?

If the worry is not being able to show visitors the previous abundance of game since they have all dispersed, imagine the marketing benefits which could be reaped by explaining how the reserve is involved with the ‘bigger picture’ and not isolating itself from the growing conservation community. Guides and pamphlets can explain why visitors might not be seeing certain species at the moment and how, if they come back in a few years time, they can see a population which has grown and is now surviving and controlling its own numbers on a gigantic tract of land – better that than having to explain to them why that lioness is on contraception, has no cubs and has a purple patch on her flank from the dart wound she got yesterday from the vet...and yes, I realise with some species you will always need to manage them to a degree, as is ‘necessary’ in the mega Kruger Park, but that is a discussion for another day.

There are also issues of co-management or the need to relinquish management to a neighbour, which I can attest and have seen are not easy aspects of sharing wildlife, but who are we to even ‘own’ the wildlife in the first place, surely we should be striving to give them as much space to roam as we can, which neighbouring game reserves have the ability to do. I am sure I am being an idealist and maybe I am ignorant of the costs to ‘losing’ game which was brought in at a huge expense. However, if the governments of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa are willing to give it a go, surely smaller scale reserves can follow the lead of the likes of Nelson Mandela who initiated the Peace Parks Foundation.

Suck it up and drop it is what I say....