02:50 GMT 20th May 2011
He received the 2011 Goldman Prize for Africa in San Fransisco, US, in April alongside five other conservationists representing other regions across the world.
Du Toit is the director of Lowveld Rhino Trust, which he set up in 2009 following years of work in rhino conservation with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the southern Lowveld region of Zimbabwe. As a result of his efforts, this region currently contains more rhinos than it has for more than a century, including the world's fourth largest population, created through the Trust's rescue of rhinos from less secure areas. From four per cent of Zimbabwe's total black rhino population when the Lowveld conservancies were first established in the early 1990s, this region now contains over 350 black rhinos - over 80 per cent of the national herd.
With single-minded determination, Du Toit weathered the economic and political crisis gripping the country and stayed put while most of his professional colleagues and compatriots generally joined the great brain drain towards the proverbial greener pastures beyond Zimbabwe's borders. Ever seeking ways to safeguard the future of the black rhino under these difficult conditions, Du Toit, with support from the International Rhino Foundation and other donors, founded the Lowveld Rhino Trust with key stakeholders to promote rhino conservation in the context of sustainable rural development.
He believes strongly in community ownership of wildlife to guarantee sustainable conservation and local development since it is local communities that bear the costs of hosting wildlife, often through the destruction of crops and livestock.
'Over the years there have been some pioneering conservation activities in Zimbabwe. The process started many years ago in terms of giving the private commercial sector power to manage wildlife resources, and later this continued to rural communities. And essentially the concept is the same in terms of giving people on the ground power to manage wildlife resources for their own benefit,' he told NeJvsAfiica in London whilst en route to receive his prize in the US.
In order to create incentives for local communities to take ownership and participate in conservation efforts, the Lowveld Trust is assisting these communities to acquire rhino breeding stock in adjacent conservancies, so that the valuable progeny can be sold to restocking projects in the region and the proceeds used to fund local schools. For du Toit, the birth of every rhino is a heartwarming achievement in the struggle to save this species and the ecosystems it inhabits, especially if that birth represents some tangible gain for impoverished people upon whose attitudes the future of Africa's wildlife and wild places depends.
Today, du Toit and his small team work in and around these Lowveld reserves to monitor rhinos, address injuries caused by poachers, reinforce efforts to tackle poaching, move rhinos to safer areas when required, and build community awareness of the need to conserve rhinos. Du Toit accepts that his work with key partners has created a stronghold of black rhinos in Africa but fears that this population will be severely challenged by evermore organized and powerful commercial poaching rings.
Indeed, the threat to black rhinos across Africa is still huge. During 2010, over 300 rhinos were poached in South Africa which was double the rate of the previous year. In the Lowveld conservancies, only 18 were poached during the same period. Although discounted in western medicine, the alleged medicinal value of rhino horns has been culturally established in Asia over many centuries. The increasing presence of East Asians in Africa has shortened the supply chain, allowing high market prices to be paid closer to the source of the horns.
Faced with shrinking habitats and the everlooming threat of poaching, Africa's black rhinos remain critically endangered. The promise of catching a glimpse of these iconic animals draws international tourists to private game parks, bringing much-needed income to several countries in southern Africa. But in Zimbabwe, tourism withered during a decade of political strife, and a small group of conservationists were left to work against all odds to protect the country's remaining rhinos.
The populations of black rhino have been decimated during the 20th Century because of shrinking habitats and ruthless hunting for their horns, which are also used for ceremonial daggers in the Middle East. The impact of poaching has been most acute on the African herd. For instance, between 1972 and 1992, poachers depleted the rhino population on the continent from 65,000 animals down to a precarious 2,600. In Zimbabwe, the population in 1993 stood at just 370 animals.
However, between 1993 and 2000, intensive anti poaching and conservation efforts led by the international community helped to push the black rhino population in Zimbabwe back ro 435 animals. The Mugabe-led government then began to implement a controversial fast-track land resetdement programme which stimulated poaching and obliterated rhino habitats in some former conservancies. Unplanned resetdement, coupled with economic meltdown, more aggressive poaching, and the loss to Zimbabwe of international conservation funding, combined to put the rhino's recovery in serious jeopardy.
According to du Toit, there's nothing wrong with Zimbabwe's legal and policy frameworks as they are capable of sustaining various models of conservation and partnerships. 'However, the challenges to be dealt with include maintaining momentum of current sustainable conservation efforts under the strain of political and economic difficulties and bringing in new producers in a sense into what were the former commercial ranching areas in ways that create economic sustainability as well as social and political stability,' Du Toit told NewsAfrica.
It is the issue of bringing in new players into the wildlife conservation sector that is most contentious in Zimbabwe at present. The government extended its land reform and economic indigenisation policies to the wildlife sector, with many leading politicians and military generals openly known to have been allocated land in wildlife conservancies in the Lowveld. For private operators in this sector, their bone of contention with the government's policy is that they are not free to choose their own partners but are compelled to accept whoever government presents to them as business partners. The economic indigenisation regulations compel all foreign owned companies as well as those owned by white Zimbabweans to cede at least 51 per cent of their businesses to black Zimbabweans.
For du Toit, the problem with the current model of partnerships is that it gives only token recognition to local communities, who are envisaged to hold only a 10 per cent stake in the wildlife businesses. 'The other problem also has to do with the fact that some of these new partners who are senior political and military leaders, are on the US sanctions list, which creates new problems for the wildlife sector which depends almost entirelyon safari hunting, and the US is a major market for Zimbabwean safari operators,' du Toit explained.
'The answers haven't been fully sorted out yet but I do think that Zimbabwe has got the right foundation, and that foundation will serve a variety of models for wildlife production involving different user groups in different combinations, and different forms of public, private, and community partnerships are possible on our legal foundation,' he said.
'In the short term we have to deal with the very short term expectation that there's a lot of profit to be made out of wildlife in Zimbabwe and the fact that the current indigenisation approach in Zimbabwe is very much based upon individual entrepreneurial involvement for new partners with less emphasis on community participation, which someone like me wishes to see. The whole land reform approach has to adequately incorporate the community, otherwise it's not going to work, hence the current poaching problems that swirl around Southern Africa.'
Du Toit also advocates on the internationallevel for rhino protection and has helped A six-week old baby rhino with its mother. The African black rhino is an endangered species reintroduce rhino populations in Botswana and Zambia. His programme does not simply focus on wildlife conservation. Instead, he incorporates international policy, biodiversity in the larger context, and land use to help Zimbabwe negotiate the balance between conservation and development. For du Toit, environmental stewardship and wildlife conservation are crucial aspects of Zimbabwe's path to development.
However, the challenge of appropriate and sustainable land use looks set to dog Zimbabwe for some time to come. In the chaotic implementation of the government's land reform programme, many wildlife conservancies and forestry plantations were taken over by local setders - often abetted by Zanu PF politicians and war veterans.
The heads of the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and the Forestry Commission told parliament recently of the upsurge in poaching activities and indiscriminate cutting down of commercial forests by setders. They bemoaned the lack of political will by the government to regularise setdements in conservancies and forest plantations by resetding these subsistence farmers elsewhere. But in a country locked in election mode for the past decade, it is nigh impossible for the Zimbabwean government to setde this anomaly in the immediate future.
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