Burning our future: In Mumbwa GMA trees are disappearing, fast

 

Cut trees ready to be burnt into charcoal. Pictures: Kellie Bocxe

 

Gertrude Mwimba.

A man ploughs a new field.

Boys sit on fresh logs in the Mumbwa GMA.

A man stands on a giant charcoal kiln measuring 40m, in the Mumbwa GMA.

JACK ZIMBA

WE HAD only driven a few hundred metres inside the Mumbwa Game Management Area (GMA), branching off from the M9, the road that leads to Mongu, when we found the first evidence of the destruction – a large charcoal kiln.

When our vehicle came to a stop, a man and two young boys making the kiln took to their heels, disappearing behind the tall trees.

Kennedy, one of the game rangers escorting us, counted about 50 fresh stumps of the mutondo tree around the kiln. He wagged his head, more in frustration than in disbelief.

The game ranger has now become accustomed to such scenes in this protected swath of forest, which also acts as a buffer zone for the country’s largest wildlife sanctuary – the Kafue National Park, which occupies 22,400km/sq.

The Mumbwa GMA is made up of two protected forests known as Mumbwa East and Mumbwa West, sitting on 3,760km/sq of land.

About 200m from the charcoal kiln, a man was walking behind a pair of oxen, ploughing a newly opened field.

And driving deeper into the forest, we made a grim discovery – large-scale charcoal production. The largest kiln we found measured three metres wide, 40 metres long and about two metres high.

On the edge of a clearing, Felix Mumba was standing by his 60 bags of charcoal. He was waiting for a truck to deliver the bags to Lusaka.

He makes about K2,500 profit on each trip, delivering between 150 and 180 bags of charcoal.

During my drive to Mumbwa, I had counted 22 trucks laden with charcoal headed for Lusaka. There would be more in the night to feed an insatiable appetite for energy since the energy crisis hit months ago.

And people like Felix have to work round the clock to try and keep up with the demand.

As we drove around the forest, the two game rangers in our vehicle were keen to point out the charcoal kilns.

“There is one there,” Kennedy would say whenever he spotted one.

But soon it became pointless. The kilns had now become almost ubiquitous, though sometimes inconspicuous behind the tall trees of the miombo woodland.

The evidence of human activity – cut-down trees, new and old settlements, cattle, goats and chickens – was everywhere.

Kennedy showed me a video taken on his mobile phone of a domestic dog chasing a sable antelope within the GMA.

“I took this video last week,” the game ranger told me, his voice filled with concern.

Kellie Bocxe, an ecologist who was accompanying me on the visit, showed me a satellite image on her phone which revealed the extent of the destruction. A wide area which appears green has numerous brown blobs like splatters of mud. Each blob represents hectares of land that has been cleared.

The brown areas are concentrated in the Mumbwa East GMA, which has suffered the worst encroachment.

Kellie feared the blobs have by now increased. The image on her phone was taken about a year ago.

The Mumbwa East GMA, a once pristine forest roaming with game, is no longer sacrosanct, and almost devoid of wildlife.

As we exited the forest, we came across a family of baboons – the last residents of this wilderness.

But why is the destruction of trees in the Mumbwa GMA going on almost unabated?

The answer lies in a three-year-old court document obtained by the encroachers to stop authorities from evicting them from the land they illegally occupy. 

Victor Bwatu is one of the self-proclaimed village headmen in the GMA, overseeing 62 households. He is also the one who took the matter to court to stop the evictions.

Mr Bwatu, himself, lays claim to 50 hectares of land in the GMA.

He settled in the area in 2004 from Namwala. Then in 2015, he and the other settlers were evicted by the Zambia Wildlife Authority (that was before it was transformed into the Department of National Parks and Wildlife), but they went to court and were granted an injunction to stop the evictions. They returned to the land the following year.

Then in 2017, wildlife authorities and the Community Resource Board came again to forcibly remove them, but they went to court and were granted a stay of execution.

Many blame the encroachment in the GMA on the late Chief Mulendema.

The Mumbwa West GMA lies in his area, although the entire GMA is under the custodian of three chiefs – Mulendema, Kabulwebulwe and Chibuluma.

It is a mistake the new Chief Mulendema is now trying to correct.

In June, he decreed that there should be no commercial charcoal production in his chiefdom and the GMA, but he said enforcing the decree has been an uphill battle.

“We can’t stop charcoal [production], but we can reduce it drastically,” he said.

He added: “That area, if we don’t handle it well, people will be oozing into the national park, and in future your children, your grandchildren will only be hearing that there was an animal called the porcupine. They will be seeing them from books.”

But for now, even the chief’s hands are tied because of the pending court case.

“Nobody wants their fingers burnt,” he told me.

Today, there are over 3,000 people living in the area, and letters to various government authorities to have the encroachers removed and save the forest keep piling.

“It’s like we are fighting a losing battle. How can an injunction be in court for so long?” said Gertrude Mwiba, who is one of the community leaders.

She is a tree hugger who has stood for the Mumbwa GMA for years. She now sounds frustrated at the current legal stand-off.

“Mumbwa GMA is finished,” she told me. “If nothing happens this year and allow these people to plough, just know that we won’t have any GMA next year.”

But perhaps she is not willing to give up just yet.

“I’m ready to be arrested over that natural resource, but one day they will realise that I was fighting for a good cause,” she said.

Gertrude, who is a retired forestry officer herself, said impounding trucks carrying illegal charcoal is not enough.

“It’s better you stop someone from cutting a tree than impounding a charcoal truck,” she said.

An officer from the Forestry Department who spoke unofficially and did not want his identity revealed told me the department lacks capacity to police 3,760km/sq hectares of forest. It only has about five technical staff and no reliable transport.

He said the forestry officers don’t do patrols because of lack of transport.

The forestry officer said about four trucks carrying illegal charcoal are impounded every month. But he said the number could be higher if more patrols were done.

He said the charcoal dealers work in syndicates; they get licences from other districts, but get the charcoal from the Mumbwa GMA. He said there are also many Tanzanians involved in the illegal charcoal business.

The transporters also use bush tracks to avoid checkpoints.

The forestry officer told me he was worried about what was happening in the GMA.

“There is also a lot of logging happening in Mumbwa GMA,” he said.

He said the department does not know the rate at which trees are being cut in the GMA, but he said it is happening at a very fast rate.

“We are almost losing that GMA,” he said.

“A tree is a very vulnerable resource, it’s not like an animal,” he told me. “When an animal sees you coming, it is going to run away, but a tree will never run away until it falls.”

His analogy was both funny and sad.

Zambia has 174,522km/q of GMA with 62,282km/q devoted to national parks. How much of that still remains today is anyone’s guess.

But a study by the Zambian Carnivore Programme (ZCP) in 2014 estimated that up to 18 hectares of protected forest was disappearing every hour because of encroachment.

The study mainly focused on the Luangwa Valley.  

Dr Matthew Becker, who is director of ZCP, said encroachment has a two-pronged impact: habitat loss and land degradation.

And as humans and domestic animals come close to wildlife, there is high risk of rabies outbreak, which can wipe out species such as the African wild dog. The African wild dog is ranked as the most endangered mammal in the world.

“We’ve actually had a couple of rabies outbreaks in that area,” said Dr Becker.

The ecologist has been working in a region known as the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, which covers the Kafue National Park and surrounding forests.

Department of National Parks and Wildlife director Andrew Chomba said while the department has scored successes in fighting poaching, especially for high-value animals such as elephants, encroachment has now emerged as the biggest threat to Zambia’s wildlife.

“Without question, it is the biggest threat,” he said.

“It is terrible, it makes my heart bleed to see truckloads of charcoal knowing that it is coming from our protected areas,” said Mr Chomba.

He wants a thorough study to determine how much of Zambia’s protected forests are still intact.

Yunus Patel holds concession for both Mumbwa East and Mumbwa West GMAs for trophy hunting.

But the encroachment is now affecting his business because hunters don’t want to hunt near human settlements, and the number of game is now on a steep decline.

Last year when he went to the Mumbwa East GMA to try and repair a damaged dam, he was chased by the settlers.

Mr Patel’s plan is to restock the area with wildlife.

“There used to be plenty of animals in this area – elephants, buffalo. We used to hunt in that area many years ago, back in the 80s. There was no encroachment, there were no villages,” said Mr Patel, sounding exasperated. 

“If the situation doesn’t change, the livelihood of the people, the little amount which we as concession holders give the communities will stop. Eventually the animals will finish. What are they going to have?” he said.

Mr Patel pays about US$70,000 for the concession licence annually, and pays K500,000 to the three chiefdoms every year for community projects.

While the authorities wait for the court process, the charcoal producers are not waiting.

Late at night, and back on the M9, my headlights picked a tardy truck laden with charcoal at a checkpoint heading to Lusaka. The truck had no taillights or reflectors, and simply blended with the darkness. Soon it will be back to collect some more charcoal.