For many people living in rural Africa, wildlife is a burden of living alongside protected areas. Most rural villagers only ever see elephant when the elephant are crop raiding their gardens, or carnivores when they are killing livestock. Human wildlife conflict is part of life for many rural villagers. Africa’s human populations is estimated to double in the next 30 years. This will only increase pressures on natural resources, and increase human wildlife conflict.

Weekly Wildlife Interactions

The Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust hosts a weekly conservation education program in which we bring children from some of these rural areas to interact with wildlife ambassadors. Ultimately these children will be responsible for the long-term sustainability of wildlife populations and natural resources. By working with children from a young age we aim to change people’s negative perceptions of wildlife. This project hosts a weekly group of approximately twenty school children who interact with the Trust’s wildlife ambassadors such as “Sylvester” the cheetah and “Judge” the vulture and discuss the challenges with human wildlife conflict, poaching and poisoning.

A key part of this program focuses on the problems of poisoning wildlife and the spillover effects into other species such as vultures who are experiencing major declines in their populations. The Trust transports each school group to its facilities for the weekly activity. After the interaction and discussion every child has a hot lunch and is given a “Vusa the Vulture Guardian” booklet to take home. The booklet is a narrative of a local rural villager and his problems with wildlife conflict, poaching and poisoning and the benefits of wildlife to his village and neighbors. Inside each booklet is the conflict hotline for our Human Wildlife Conflict project and team.