Take Action Trust, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is one of the few places that you can travel to in Africa and experience the wild in the most authentic way possible. Not only does Zimbabwe boast a variety of fauna and flora, but there are over 11 reserves that you can visit to experience it all. It is important to understand though, that there is a fine line between a balanced nature reserve and a broken one. It takes one aspect to be slightly off for the whole system to start crumbling. Zimbabwe is one of the many places in the world that suffer from the consequences of poaching, which in turn throws off the balance and causes these reserves to start crumbling.

Local poaching, the trickiest type, is when local people surrounding a reserve actually enter the privately owned land to hunt the animals. When these poachers enter, they set up snares along their path and wait for the animal to get caught in it and die. The snare either wraps around the animals neck, which means it will suffocate to death or it wraps around a part of their body making it uncomfortable or physically impossible for them to survive out there. What's really terrifying is that each poacher will set up at least 15 snares along the way. The poachers don't go back and check the other snares after they've caught one animal so this means that the other 14 snares left behind act as collateral damage. And this is the very sad reality that people like Keith Sparks have to face every day...

One of the locations I was luckily enough to live in for a couple of weeks was an incredible area called Bubiana Conservancy, which is located in the Matebelaland South of Zimbabwe. This property is a beautiful piece of land that extends over hectares of koppies, dams, caves and so much more. The family who was kind enough to let us camp on this property, has been taking care of this land and the beings inside of it for many years and are entirely dedicated to this conservancy. Particularly Keith Sparks, who has implemented ideas of his own which will benefit this property for years to come as well as the communities and land surrounding him.

The wildlife within is diverse and the land itself is so carefully maintained. We were lucky enough to be able to spend week 3 - 4 on this land. On one of our leopard tracking adventures, we had set up motion cameras in order to see what animals were actively roaming the specific area throughout the night. One of the visitors we had was a hyena, which was very exciting knowing there was hyena activity so close to us. Luckily, Keith noticed that there was a snare caught in the hyenas mouth. Keith explained that hyenas often walk with their mouth open and their heads lower to the ground (I'm sure you can all picture it) and because the snares are positioned at such an awkward angle, it can easily get caught in their mouths.

Now it's important to note that a hyena has the strength of 500kg per square inch, almost twice the strength of a lion. The fact that it can not break out of this snare goes to show just how horrible and fatal these tools actually are. That was just one example. Imagine what the other 14 snares are going to do and that is to say if only one group of poachers enters an area. It is beyond devastating when the damage to your animals, on your property and under your protection are the ones being sacrificed. It creates an unimaginable amount of pressure and tension.

This all lead to the call for a strong solution. This was when Keith's organisation Take Action Trust decided to start implementing their anti-poaching K9 units. Take Action Trust aims to save and protect their animals, raise awareness about poaching all while supporting and giving back to the communities surrounding Bubiana. This program trains dogs to walk alongside patrol guards on reserves and act as an alert system and a means to catch the poachers without too much force that could be detrimental to either party. The reason these dogs contribute so much to the anti-poaching effort is because they are trained in such a way that there is only reward in the things that they do. Positive reinforcement training is difficult, but Take Action has proven it is in fact the most beneficial way to approach the issue of poaching. I was lucky enough to witness the skill and power in real life and I was in total awe that a system like this exists. Take Action Trust and people like Keith Sparks are taking part in the type of solutions that are going to change the poaching game and they deserve a lot more credit...

The video attached below gives you a cool snippet of what Keith and his team has to offer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpeQYKyVEVY