Plans to move on to Mozambique today have changed, or should I say postponed until next week!
We hopped from Philipp’s house to another couch surfer in Harare. A Zimbabwean born white guy called Haus (Austrian name). He’s got a pool company in Harare, but his passion is in anti-poaching in the region. He is an active board member of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (www.iapf.org), and has helped equip rangers throughout the region with education, training and resources. He also told us that funding is easier to get for people than animals, so they’ve been teaching local people about the dangers of poaching and creating projects for income generation in order to reduce the incentive to poach. There seem to be two main reasons for poaching – subsistence poaching for meat and poaching for animal products – ivory, skins, etc.
Did you know that Rhino horn sells at USD $70, 000 per kg on the street? And that an “on the ground” poacher is lured into poaching with the promise of $5,000 per horn (which weighs a good few kilos)? Haus informed us that rhino horns can actually be cut safely, and will grow back in 2-3 years – and hence introduced us to the idea of sustainable ivory farming, a possible future practice in Zimbabwe.
We hopped from Philipp’s house to another couch surfer in Harare. A Zimbabwean born white guy called Haus (Austrian name). He’s got a pool company in Harare, but his passion is in anti-poaching in the region. He is an active board member of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (www.iapf.org), and has helped equip rangers throughout the region with education, training and resources. He also told us that funding is easier to get for people than animals, so they’ve been teaching local people about the dangers of poaching and creating projects for income generation in order to reduce the incentive to poach. There seem to be two main reasons for poaching – subsistence poaching for meat and poaching for animal products – ivory, skins, etc.
Did you know that Rhino horn sells at USD $70, 000 per kg on the street? And that an “on the ground” poacher is lured into poaching with the promise of $5,000 per horn (which weighs a good few kilos)? Haus informed us that rhino horns can actually be cut safely, and will grow back in 2-3 years – and hence introduced us to the idea of sustainable ivory farming, a possible future practice in Zimbabwe.
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