For communities living within the GMA’s along the boundary of the South Luangwa National Park, living with wildlife has unique challenges. Since 2007, we have worked closely with Community Resource Boards (CRBs) and traditional community leadership to implement human-wildlife coexistence projects, alternative livelihoods initiatives as well as broader community education outreach and community-driven conservation programmes. These community activities, and the CSL Community team, have grown and developed into a range of programmes reaching an estimated population of 100,000 across 7 rural Chiefdoms bordering the South Luangwa National Park.
In 2021, CSL officially launched the CSL Community department, formally acknowledging the growing scale and vital importance of this work as part of our overall mission to conserve the wildlife and habitats of the South Luangwa Valley. We believe wholeheartedly in the importance of community participation, collaboration and consultation, and by explicitly differentiating CSL’s Community work we aim to further build the breadth and depth of community relations in order to increase our impact on people and wildlife across the region.
Conflict Mitigation
Communities surrounding the South Luangwa National Park often face huge losses due to elephant conflicts. As the human population increases in the Luangwa Valley due to the booming development of the area, conflicts including crop raiding, property damage and livestock predation by lions are also increasing. A lack of a land use plan in the game management areas (GMAs) means that development is uncontrolled with farms and infrastructure rapidly increasing. CSL supports communities to mitigate these challenges using a variety of methods involving chilli blasting, elephant safe grain stores, watch towers, elephant restraining electric and, new in 2021 ‘smelly’ fences. Also, a Rapid Response Unit (RRU) which comprises of a dedicated team with a vehicle, on-call 24/7 to respond to serious threats to lives and livelihoods.
Alternative Livelihoods
In rural areas where formal employment is scarce, the majority of households in the Mambwe District rely on subsistence farming and natural resources for their household income. With farming, fishing and hunting comes the inevitable risk of wildlife conflict through crop damage and attacks on livestock or even on farmers themselves.
Since 2009, CSL has worked with farmers to plant and harvest alternative crops that not only bring additional household income but also support human-wildlife coexistence approaches by deterring elephants from damaging crops, thereby conflict with farmers.
Community Awareness
Alongside the conflict mitigation strategies and alternative livelihood work, the CSL Community team conduct community outreach with the broad aim of educating communities on how to safely prevent and reduce wildlife conflicts as well as promote the Human-Wildlife Conflict Hotline phone numbers. This includes activities focus on wide-scale messaging via radio broadcasts as well as community-level education activities aimed at both adults and kids in partnership with the Mfuwe-based Seka Education Theatre group.