ZIMBABWE, HARARE — Numerous impalas are corralled by helicopter. Elephants are loaded onto trailers while upside-down using a crane. A herd of rangers herds other animals into metal cages, and a truck caravan sets out on a 700-kilometer (435-mile) trip to deliver the creatures to their new habitat.
Since the effects of climate change have replaced poaching as the greatest threat to wildlife in Zimbabwe, the country has begun relocating over 2,500 wild animals from a reserve in the south to one in the north.
One of the largest live animal capture and translocation exercises in southern Africa involves the relocation of around 400 elephants, 2,000 impalas, 70 giraffes, 50 buffaloes, 50 wildebeest, 50 zebras, 50 elands, 10 lions, and a pack of 10 wild dogs from Zimbabwe’s Save Valley Conservancy to three conservancies in the north: Sapi, Matusadonha, and Chizarira.
The initiative, dubbed “Project Rewild Zambezi,” involves relocating the animals to the Zambezi River valley in an effort to restore the local wildlife population.
A wildlife migration of this scale has not been attempted within Zimbabwe for 60 years. More than five thousand animals were relocated during “Operation Noah,” which took place between 1958 and 1964 while Rhodesia was dominated by a white minority. The construction of a major hydroelectric dam on the Zambezi River led to the formation of Lake Kariba, one of the world’s largest man-made lakes, and this operation saved wildlife from drowning.
Tinashe Farawo, a spokesman for the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, explained that the scarcity of water has caused the animals to be relocated because their natural habitat has dried up.
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To prevent “a calamity from happening,” as Farawo put it, the parks department approved permits allowing the animals to be relocated.
We are releasing tension by doing this. Farrow told the Associated Press that “climate change has emerged as the greatest threat to our species” after years of fighting poaching.
Overcrowding is a problem in many of our parks, and resources like water and food are running low. The animals ruin their own environment, become a threat to themselves, and raid human populations nearby for food, he claimed, leading to constant strife.
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