Flamingo - Nature - The recovery of the black-faced impala
Beautiful and aloof, with its delicate shades of peach and ochre, its striking facial markings, the imposingly swung horns of the male, the exquisite face of the female… the black-faced impala is one of Namibia’s most charismatic antelopes.
The common impala (Aephyceros melampus melam-pus) is abundant throughout many of the woodland areas of Southern Africa and tends to be the staple diet for a range of large predators, including lion, leopard, African wild dog, spotted hyaena – and also man. Yet its desert cousin is a much more elusive animal, endemic to the dry lands of north-western Namibia and southern Angola.
In the 1980s, this sub-species (Aephyceros melampus petersii) was on the brink of disappearing altogether from its natural range. A combination of drought and uncontrolled poaching during Namibia’s independence struggle saw the population plummeting. Through a relocation scheme, breeding groups were moved from Kaokoland to the Etosha National Park to ensure the survival of the species. While only a scattered remnant population remained in Kaokoland and the status of the Angolan population was unknown, the Etosha population thrived, spreading throughout much of the park. Now, a few decades later, the black-faced impala, together with black rhino, desert-adapted elephant and lion, is symbolic of one of the most remarkable wildlife recoveries in Africa.
The devolvement of usage rights over natural resources to local communities after Namibia’s independence was a catalyst that changed the face of conservation in Namibia. Under South African apartheid rule, communal area residents in Namibia had no rights over the natural resources occurring around them. All resources were owned and controlled by the state. Traditional methods of sustainable utilisation were deemed illegal and traditional hunters were considered to be poachers. This led to wildlife being seen as nothing more than a threat to livestock herding and crop production. Plains game was actively poached to provide meat for the pot and predators were often shot on sight. There were no benefits to be derived from wildlife and thus there were no reasons to conserve it – game numbers were low and decreasing.
When the conservancy legislation was passed in 1996, people were suddenly able to derive direct and significant benefits from wildlife (and also from plant products) by forming conservancies and actively managing their natural resources. Conservancies are clearly defined tracts of land, which local communities manage through an elected committee and an approved management plan. Within conservancies, wildlife is effectively protected and monitored – and utilised on a sustainable basis through tourism, hunting and game translocations.
Today there are 27 registered conservancies in north-western Namibia, and, through targeted re-introductions, black-faced impala now occur in about a third of these. This year’s translocations alone have moved 300 animals into four conservancies. The impala were captured in Etosha using the helicopter and boma method. The animals were kept in quarantine facilities for 21 days to be cleared by veterinary services prior to being transported to release sites. Here they were kept for a few hours in a temporary boma to allow them to settle down and re-form family groups before being quietly released.
The animals will now be monitored over a two-year period by community game guards and scientists using cellphone collars, water-point camera traps and sightings data. The monitoring evaluates post-release survival, movement patterns and breeding rate to ensure the success of the re-introduction programme and allow for adaptive management. Later, the monitoring will be done solely by conservancy game guards as part of the regular monitoring and recording of sightings through their Event Book System.
The current translocation efforts have been co-funded by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and the Integrated Community-Based Ecosystem Management (ICEMA) Project within the MET, supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the French Fund for the Global Environment (FFEM), with some additional support by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Namibia. Pierre du Preez, Chief Conservation Scientist at the MET, has led the initiative in collaboration with Jo Tagg and Vincent Guillemin from ICEMA/FFEM, with support from Greg Stuart-Hill from WWF.
A recent statement by MET warden Shadrack Siloka captures the significance of such game translocations and the growing trust in community-based natural resource management in Namibia: “I would never have thought we would be taking wildlife out of our national parks and translocating it into our communal areas.” It is indeed a remarkable transformation. Namibia has moved away from the preservation paradigm, which uses protected ‘islands’ that seek to keep wildlife in and people out. The MET is generously donating game from national parks to repopulate communal areas, clearly demonstrating Government’s full commitment to the national Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme. The validity and success of an alternative approach is becoming evident: ‘conservation by the people for the people’ – which can have applications all over the world.
While working in Kaokoland in the mid-nineties, I sat on a remote rocky outcrop and scanned the surrounding landscape for game. After long, fruitless searching, I spotted a small group of impala emerging from a stand of mopane, far off in the distance. I could make out the stately horns of the male amongst his harem of females. Then the group disappeared again amongst the vegetation. It felt more like an apparition than a sighting. It was the highlight of over two weeks in the field. Today it is possible to encounter impala in many parts of Kaokoland on a relatively regular basis.
People are excited to have impala back in their area. They represent a return to a better state – both of the environment and of people’s livelihoods. Communal area residents can once again derive a living from the natural resources around them. Yet it no longer needs to be a mere subsistence livelihood, but can now include significant and steadily increasing economic benefits. Wildlife, including the very valuable black-faced impala, represents an opportunity to facilitate sustainable rural development in general.
Helge Denker represents NACSO/WWF in Namibia and Vincent Guillemin represents ICEMA/MET.
