Preparation
This trip was to be a little more difficult than the previous trips, as it was intended to include the Kariba people in ground patrols for snares etc around Kariba and the Charara area.
After numerous telephone calls to contact the right people, in order to gather volunteers from Kariba itself and ensuring that the Vehicular support was set up, the "Water patrol" left on the Monday to start on Tuesday morning, and a meeting was set up to introduce the ZCTF to the Kariba people and also to plan and coordinate the ground patrols.
Petrol was a little scarce in Kariba as far as the Marinas were concerned, but we were fortunate to be able to source all our fuel requirements from one place and we also had the 100 litres in stock at Chawara, which we drew 80 litres from for the first days patrols, and also 60 litres from Charara.
The patrols on the water were to be done in two boats, one a private vessel, and the other the refurbished DNPWM boat (MBOMA), that would be deployed to the Sanyati area with the Tashinga Warden after this patrol.
Arrangements for Rangers (4) had been made with DNPWM in Kariba but this eventually was cut down to two by Monday and then almost to one.
Consequently, arrangements were made with the Tashinga Warden to borrow three rangers from there to carry out the patrols on the water, and on the ground.
These rangers were delivered on Tuesday just after lunchtime, and a discussion was had with the Tashinga Warden who accompanied the rangers to Kariba.
This discussion included the deployment of the boat, and the future trips around his area, and also the recovery of one of the small semi rigid boats back to Kariba.

Conditions
The rivers had begun to flow with the first set of rains and the rivers were muddy and thus the early spawners and feeders and already started to move into the dirty water.

Tuesday 20th November 2001
The rangers were collected for a patrol into the Naodza and Gache Gache rivers. Three Kapenta rigs fishing in the illegal area, were intercepted on the way out of the Charara bay, and these were each fined for being in an illegal area and for fishing in less than 20 meters of water.
The one rig started to run whilst we were dealing with the first two but this rig was intercepted and issued with the appropriate fines.
The first boat into the Naodza, also intercepted a rig well inside the illegal area and intercepted it prior to it getting into legal waters, but the rig operator tried to run the boat crew over in effort to escape. Fortunately this was evaded and the rig operators were issued the appropriate fines. By the time the rigs had been dealt with it was too late to do the Gache Gache so both boats covered the Naodza on the first day.
A boat with two poachers was encountered with a net across the Naodza, just before the power lines, (see map 1) and it had apparently just been laid and already had quite a lot of fish in it when recovered.
The water depth has decreased vary dramatically due to the drop in the lake and also from very serious siltation, and the boats were continuously getting stuck on the bottom whilst trying to get to the poachers.
Three nets (about 100 to 150 meters each) were recovered with about 20 to 30 kilograms of fresh fish, and some 20 kgs of salt were also recovered. The fishermen were issued with their fine and were allowed to take their boat back to the cooperative from which they had come from.
Normally the boat is confiscated, but the logistics of continuing the patrol whilst towing the craft around were considered and the boat was left with the fishermen.
Efforts were made to go further down the river looking for a deeper channel but just before the power lines this idea was shelved due to the water depth being too shallow. There is little doubt that there could have been more fishermen further up, but we were unable to reach them.
Further thought needs to be given to enabling patrols to get further up the rivers faster than walking through the bush to investigate. A possibility would be to use canoes which can travel in very shallow water. (See comments later at the end of the report)
The boats then moved further out of the river and checked the edges for signs of nets and poachers camps but with the recent heavy rains there was little to see unless they were very fresh tracks, which were not seen.
The boats moved over to the Tsetse camp area and checked the bay for nets and signs of fish cleaning but none were found, and then it was decided to check the camp itself after the reports from earlier in the year in regard to the fish that had been seen there.
Upon landing on the beach and climbing up to the ridge to go to the village a large tank was found that had been set up as a "brine tank" to cure fish. There was some 400 to 500 kgs of salting fish in there, and it appeared to be only two days worth of fish, judging by the condition of the fish.
The camp staff were interrogated, but denied all knowledge of the tank, or who had brought it there.
Judging from the marks on the ground it had been brought by boat, and rolled up the same hill that we had climbed to get to the village. Thus it was fairly safely concluded that it was brought in by boat, and not by vehicle through the camp. The camp was searched, but there were no large amounts of fish around, although there were a few barbel and other fish drying on the fence surrounding the camp, which it would appear were caught on lines from the shore.
DNPWM Kariba were contacted to come and collect the tank either by vehicle or boat (Eagle), as we were unable to carry the tank and its contents away on the boats that we had.
Kariba despatched the Eagle from Kariba and the teams waited for it to arrive. During this time a thorough search was done of the area and no nets were found at all although an area just below the camp was found with numerous floats and weights prepared for nets.
One of the boats patrolled the shoreline from the "Red Banks" down past the Tsetse camp with no result other than tracks of where people had been waiting and walking. These were presumed to be where nets had been laid and then removed during that night.
The Eagle arrived and collected the tank and the fish and nets recovered earlier, for delivery back to Peters point.
The boats continued their patrol, around the DDF area just below the Army base, and found spoor of poaching camps that was around two days old, but no nets or fish were recovered.
The patrols were then concluded and the boats and rangers returned to their base at around 11.00 am. after a brief sojourn into the Ruia river near the Banana Farm where nothing was found.

A meeting was held with the Kariba Warden around midday for a couple of hours, where the patrols and future operations of the ZCTF were discussed, and various other issues were brought up. This meeting was most constructive and provided some interesting information.
It was made apparent that copies of the patrols are not being forwarded to the Wardens concerned, and thus it was arranged that this will be done by the ZCTF in the future.
The warden assured us that he reacted to any calls of illegal activities, as long as he had resources available at the time. If not he would react to these calls as soon as possible.
The possibility of basing some staff around the Charara area to apprehend illegal rigs and netters in the area, were discussed and possibly this can be arranged in the near future, as soon as the other boat for Tashinga is complete and the new motor mounted etc. and the boat delivered, releasing the Mboma for use in the Kariba area until their establishment can be refurbished.
A bearing was collected from one of the trailers, to enable us to get new bearings for them, so a further boats can be moved around to and from refurbishment etc.
The rangers from Tashinga were collected and located at the base of operation, after a discussion with the Tashinga Warden in regard to their usage and the future patrols etc.

Evening meeting with Kariba residents.
Through the help of the KPA around 9 people had volunteered to help with the ground patrols for snares etc. and I went to advise them of the activities of the ZCTF and what we were trying to achieve and what we could do to help them in regard to Antipoaching patrols etc.
I was very pleasantly surprised when there were more than 20 people at the meeting, and we ended up with 22 people to do the ground patrols over the next three days.
The people were surprisingly semi unaware of what the ZCTF was, or what we were doing, despite many emails to several of the organisations over the last few months. It appeared to be a case of "we will believe it when we see it" type of attitude, more than general apathy, which is quite understandable.
Consequently the introduction of the ZCTF went down very well.
From this group of people one was chosen to coordinate the patrols together with the vehicular support, and the patrols would run until approximately 10.30 in the morning, allowing some of the people to return to their work, or to recover from their efforts, and this would be repeated ever the three days of the patrols.

Wednesday 21st November 2001
Boat Patrols
There was no early morning boat patrol carried out due to the rain and bad weather on the lake, and the Kariba rangers had no rain or water proof clothing for the conditions. The day was spent fine tuning the boats and preparing for a night trip into the Gache Gache River, and then on to the Sanyati Gorge the next morning.
Unfortunately this was again cancelled due to the weather that night.
Consideration needs to be taken of weather proof clothing for ALL personnel on these patrols and checking of weather conditions prior to patrols, so everyone can be prepared for any eventuality.

Land Patrols
These were carried out generally around the Kaburi Wildlife centre going outwards.
It was estimated that around 60 to 70 snares were found on this first day, and the remains of several animals were found some still with snares and some without (snares removed for some reason? redeployed elsewhere?).
The remains of zebra and a young leopard were points of interest.

Evening Debrief
Each of the teams gave a verbal report of where they had been and what they had found, and a self analysis was made by the teams of their efforts.
There were many good points brought out by the members themselves, and seeing as, most were doing this for the first time, the results and comments were very good.
Some of the points brought up were :-

1. The patrols were possibly moving too fast and spending a lot of their time watching out for wild animals in their path, instead of looking for snares.
2. The use of the vehicles had been under estimated, and more use should be made of using these as a reference for the "sweep line".
3. Notes should be made of where the "routes" or "Game paths" were in the various areas and these transferred onto a map for future use together with information on where snares were recovered or there were other illegal activities or evidence etc.
4. Most of the snares found were fairly close to the populated areas, showing that the poaching was coming from those areas, and they were not going too far to lay their snares.
5. The elephant dung in the area had a lot of "plastic" and other man made substances in it, showing that either the rubbish dump is being raided or the litter and rubbish is just floating around the area, and not being dealt with correctly. It was reported at one of the meetings that there was a problem with the "rubbish dump" and it did need to be resolved somehow. possibly this can be looked at by the Environment 2000 group in conjunction with the Town Council and concerned residents.

Thursday 22nd November 2001
Ground Patrols
As there was no morning boat patrols due to the weather, all the rangers were attached to the Ground patrols, and it was also their pay day, and one of the Kariba Rangers had to go to court.
In the end, the two Kariba Rangers went back to their normal duties and were not used again, and the patrols continued with the three rangers from Tashinga.
During this ground patrol, impala carcasses were found together with a buffalo carcass and many more snares were collected by the teams.
The sweeps further away from populated areas provided little or no results, thus emphasising the points noted on the first day.
Surprisingly there were no snares found around the Glitterstone quarry area or the "Chimwa" valley area, despite the amount of previously found carcasses from poachers in that area.
The evening debrief was held by the leader of the vehicular support team and was much the same as the first evenings debrief.
Arrangements were made for the last days patrols through some of the areas already covered, but to be done more thoroughly and some new ground also to be covered.

Boat patrols
Once the ground patrols were completed that morning, and the three rangers returned to the base, it was arranged to patrol the shore from the Charara area, through to the Crocodile Farm, looking for bases and boats etc. from the local fish poachers in the area.
This was done with the coxswain from Tashinga in the DNPWM boat.
Two or three base areas were found, from where the fishermen seemed to operate on a regular basis, and future ambushes and night patrols will be carried out in this area to try and apprehend these people. (see Map 2)
The boat teams prepared to go out into the Gache Gache River that evening.
At around 8.00 pm the boats left for the Gache Gache, after a rainstorm had gone around Charara in to the Kariba area, only to find that they had gone straight into another storm in the Gache area.
Fires were seen along the shoreline in the main bay possibly from the netters that operate in the legal area, but these were not pursued.
The storm and rain made navigation difficult, and the patrol was not continued right down the river, and the teams went and found safer water to spend the rest of the night (near Tsetse island).
There was no evidence of any rigs in the Gache Gache river that night, and there was little activity from any of the fishermen on the water either. It appeared that the rain had dampened their enthusiasm that night.
The rain continued almost the whole night and eventually eased up at around 04.00 am.
The teams then moved off towards the Sanyati Gorge

Friday 23rd November 2001
Boat Patrol
The boats moved out towards the Sanyati Gorge area at around 5.00 am and immediately found boats recovering nets just outside the mouth of the Gorge, inside of the 2 km limit from the mouth.
Tickets were issued and lots of nets and fish recovered from these boats, and some others were just given warnings, as they were on the very edge of the limit in front of the Sanyati lodge.
Whilst the one boat remained issuing the tickets, the other boat proceeded into the gorge and checked the old poachers camp in the crossroads. Nothing was found, and the crossroads are becoming very silted up, and access could not be gained all the way to the camp by boat.
No evidence of netting was found in the first part of the Gorge. The boat then proceeded down to the end of the gorge and saw the first poachers. The boat stopped and a foot patrol was carried out over the rock slides and the first poacher was seen in a bark canoe. Unfortunately we were unable to apprehend him and he ran up into a valley and on up the mountain.
The camp was found and fish and equipment recovered and some destroyed. The poachers wife or girlfriend was seen some way further down the gorge, and there were several more people even further down where it was totally unnavigable by power boat. There is a need for a foot patrol to be done from the road bridge coming down the gorge in order to get to these people.
In the mean time the other boat was coming down and caught three poachers just about where the rocks start and they sunk four boats and recovered a further three nets, but without finding much fish except what had just been caught that morning.
They had an interesting encounter with a crocodile that was eating tiger from the nets, and had got stuck. The crocodile was released with no ill effects from his ordeal with the net (or the recovery team).
It was noted that there were several large crocodiles in the area, and from the net that was recovered from the first boat, it appears they are feeding on the tiger and other fish caught in the nets, as several fish were mutilated.
Several fish were released from the net recovered by the first boat, and it appeared that the net had just been placed in the water, as only one of the tiger was literally spent and beyond safe release.
On the way out from the bottom of the Gorge, patrols were done along the edge looking for nets that may have been missed, the other boat showed where they had found the first camp for future reference.
As we were passing one of the rangers saw the fish drying very high up on the side of the gorge, some 100 meters up on the rocks.
This fish was then recovered and it amounted to around 90 kgs of drying fish. A further search of the area came up blank.
The patrol continued for a further kilometre or so downstream, and yielded nothing. The patrol then proceeded out of the Gorge to the DNPWM camp behind Spurwing to offload and hand over the boat for use in the Sanyati and Tashinga area, until their boat returns from repairs and refitting.
This Thursday night/Friday morning patrol achieved several thousand meters of nets seized with a vast amount of fish, (approximately 300 to 400 kgs) both fresh and dried. Fines of around $9 000 were also issued and 8 boats were sunk or destroyed.
Some of the Tiger were in the 4 to 6 kilogram range from the Gorge area.
Of note was that there were a Chessa and a couple of bottlenose and small Cornish Jack in the catches.
The DNPWM boat was left with the rangers from Tashinga, with almost two full tanks of fuel and about one litre of outboard oil in order for them to carry out a further patrol that evening.
(The results of that patrol are not known at this time)
The other boat with the ZCTF personnel left the DNPWM camp at around 12.30 to return to Kariba.

Ground Patrols
With the patrols covering mostly ground that had been done before, there were few snares found on the last day. Those that were found came from areas that had not been covered previously in general.
These patrols basically completed the Kariba area, and the only areas left are those around Charara and the Banana Farm.

Evening Debrief and meeting
In the evening a last meeting was held to evaluate the whole exercise and the results analysed, and future cooperation planned in regard to the conservation of all wildlife in the area. Generally the whole exercise had gone very well with some 140 snares recovered on the ground, and one young buffalo released from a snare to safely return (hopefully) to the herd, which would have been about half an hour away from where it was caught, judging by the spoor.
With the rains having almost set in it may be difficult to carry out further patrols, but this would be assessed again in the near future.
The boat patrols had established that the poachers were indeed in tune with the fact, that when the rivers start to flow, the fish move in almost immediately the fresh water gets into the lake. From now it would be important to continue the momentum of patrols and really make a big dent in the poaching activity for this year, by continuous action and patrols.
The enthusiasm from the local populace was most encouraging and future help was offered from many sides.
The WEZ work being carried out by the local representative, (Antonio?) was encouraged and they have offered their help for future exercises. many of the other businesses involved with wildlife and safaris etc have also offered help wherever possible for future efforts.

General Comment

1. The enthusiasm seen from the local participants was very very encouraging, and from now on I anticipate far more information flowing from them to us, in the way of which areas require attention etc. Basically during the threee days of patrols carried out the whole of the area surrounding Kariba and Nyamunga etc have been covered, and it just remains to cover the Charara area.
2. All effort must be given to reporting the incidents to the Kariba Warden timeously, and names and times of who the report was made to must be kept, as it has been said that some of the reports that we are receiving appear not have been reported to DNPWM, although the people reporting, say they have been reported to DNPWM. This issue needs to be resolved as soon as possible.
3. Where animals are walking around with snares, accurate information needs to be kept of the sightings, and this coordinated in Kariba through the "Action Group", so that any further action can be carried out timeously, and with the least waste of resources and effort. Possibly more interaction between DNPWM and the local population needs to be established in some manner, so that each are aware of what is going on in the bush around them, and on the water.
4. Note must be made of the conditions that could prevail on future patrols, and suitable attire either issued or purchased, for staff carrying out patrols during the rainy season, so efforts are not wasted or delayed on future patrols.
5. Future patrols where use is made of DNPWM staff to provide backup support on the land to coordinate with the boats needs to be given serious consideration if we are to make a serious effort to get the message through to the poachers that we are serious about this, and it will be an expensive exercise for them to continue.
6. A copy of the new legislation needs to be sought and a thorough understanding of what it means and what powers it confers on to the DNPWM staff ascertained.
7. The issue of uniforms, and a single boat specifically for the use of the ZCTF volunteers on patrols needs to be taken up with DNPWM and the Minister as soon as possible, and the repair of equipment and assets carried out to beef up the support available. Possibly further resources made available through various means, to enable DNPWM to be available "anywhere, anytime" and possibly more versatile with their capabilities.
8. In future when ground patrols are being carried out at the same time as lake patrols there is need for someone from the ZCTF to be involved to coordinate that side alone, but together with the lake patrols and they can support each other and share resources etc. It was most difficult not being able to know what was happening on the ground, as I was out on the water whilst they were doing the patrols etc. Communication between the two is important, so everyone knows what is going on.
9. It appears that the "brine tank" found at the Tsetse camp is actually a tank used for applying new sprays or dips to cattle in the Tsetse program from the back of a truck etc., and thus it must have come from a DDF base somewhere. (Hints not really necessary, are they ?)