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Game animals dying of thirst
Broken, underfunded borehole pumps mean buffalos are dropping dead by dozens

Peta Thornycroft
Daily Telegraph

Monday, October 31, 2005

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Wild animals in Zimbabwe are suffering and dying as the sun beats down during the year's hottest season.

In Africa's most densely populated game park, water from underground bores is now available only intermittently because there is no money to fix engines pumping it to the surface.

Plains animals, in particular buffalo, are dying of thirst in Hwange National Park, 20,000 square kilometres of protected wilderness that includes the eastern edge of the Kalahari desert.

According to Johnny Rodrigues, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, as many as half the animals, except elephants, are at risk because the government has failed to finance the repair of borehole pumps.

For the first time since the park was established in dry Matabeleland 76 years ago the pumps were not serviced in April or May, when last summer's below-average rains ended.

"This is mismanagement, nothing more. It's not a natural disaster,'' Rodrigues said after a heartbreaking trip last week delivering fuel donated by well-wishers to keep a few pumps working. Although the country's economic collapse ensures there is no foreign currency for imports such as fuel, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe does have cash to spend on luxury vehicles.

Parked outside the headquarters of the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority in Harare are 10 new 4x4s for executives, costing far more than repairs and service for the engines that pump water to the pans.

"Most of the water in the pans is on the surface and too shallow for animals to drink," Rodrigues said. "It is terrible to see them fighting each other for water and extraordinary to see multiple species gathering to drink.

"We know that 33 buffalos died near one water hole last week from dehydration.''

Barry Wolhuter, who runs a safari camp in Hwange, said he had seen "nothing to compare'' with conditions in the park in the past 20 years.

"It is grim,'' he said. "We try not to tell the few tourists who come here how bad it is as we don't want to upset them.''

Margie Pearce, the chairman of the Matabeleland branch of Wildlife and Environment Zimbabwe, WEZ, a long-standing voluntary organization, said the situation in Hwange was "worrying.''

"The pumps should be uplifted each dry season and that hasn't happened,'' she said. "There was little rain in Hwange last year; it was as dry as in 1998. But then the pumps were working.''

Rodrigues warned that animal carcasses had started showing up near dry water pans in the last week or so.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005