JOHANNESBURG
(AP) — Five Southern African nations on Thursday agreed to form the world's
largest international conservation area in an effort to protect nearly half of
the continent's elephants and a vast range of animals, birds and plants, many
endangered by poaching and human encroachment.
At a
ceremony in Namibia on Thursday government ministers from Angola, Botswana,
Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe put their official seal on a cross-border treaty
set to combine 36 nature preserves and surrounding areas.
The World
Wildlife Fund said the countries will cooperate on measures to allow animals to
roam freely across their borders over 170,000 square miles (440,000 square
kilometers), almost the size of Sweden.
The Kavango
Zambezi area includes the Victoria Falls World Heritage site in Zimbabwe and
Botswana's famed swampland of the Okavango Delta.
Conservationists
say historical migration routes of animals have been curtailed by national
borders and man-made conflict. The decades-long civil war in Angola saw
elephant herds, notoriously skittish to gunfire, fleeing far from their own
habitats.
Already,
Botswana is dismantling a fence on its border with Namibia after steps were
taken to curb the spread of animal diseases.
According
to the treaty put into effect Thursday, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier
Conservation Area, known as KAZA, is home to about 45 percent of Africa's
elephants. Along with other game animals, it has a rare heritage of at least
600 species of birds and 3,000 species of plants.
Previous
attempts to set up massive cross-border conservancies in Africa have failed
largely because impoverished local communities weren't engaged to help before
governments signed up, said Chris Weaver, the World Wildlife Fund's regional
director in Namibia.
"This
is very different. It has a very strong community focus," he told The
Associated Press in a telephone interview.
He said
local communities are getting jobs and revenue from tourism in return for their
role in protecting the environment.
An
independent secretariat has been established to coordinate work between state
wildlife authorities and community groups across the region. The German KFW
development bank plowed $40 million into getting the KAZA conservancy up and
running, Weaver said.
Last year,
he said, rural Namibians earned some $700,000 from their own
conservation-related activities. The money went toward further training,
transportation, water supplies and improvements for schools and clinics.
Weaver said
in recent history wildlife and nature preserves traditionally belonged to state
governments. That had encouraged poachers to steal animals from the state, a
distant and alien owner.
Now the
KAZA conservancy offered tangible benefits across the board to communities and
member countries.
"It is
good news for conservation in southern Africa," Weaver said.
