African Wildlife & Environment Issue 84 2023

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

green floodplains – just 404 square kms of flat, featureless grasslands and mopane trees. The conservancy’s only income is a small trophy hunting contract, earning them N$1.1million in 2022, plus N$40 000 from a ‘Wildlife Credit’ scheme, part of a biodiversity payment project being piloted in Namibia, set up by WWF Namibia, with private sector involvement. Species supported by ‘Wildlife Credits’ are those that cause problems or costs to conservancies, are iconic and sometimes endangered. Wildlife Credits payments to local communities can be used to protect crops and livestock from the losses these species cause, and to pay compensation for losses. I met a small group of Sobbe staff and office bearers on a Monday morning. We sat on plastic chairs under a tree outside the large green painted Sobbe Conservancy office, because the meeting room was filled, almost to the ceiling, with gum poles and wire fencing bought with the Wildlife Credit money for several predator proof

black-backed jackal, caracal and buffalo. Annual surveys show that all such species have increased over the past 20 years as has their range and distribution. Counter-intuitively to some, it is hunting that keeps the critical Sobbe corridor open and available to this thriving wildlife. Sobbe’s residents are mostly subsistence farmers, some of whom do a small amount of cash cropping. A few score of people have jobs and there are probably less than 50 vehicle owners in the area. Wildlife is a constant threat to farming, with an average of 50 to 60 elephant incidents reported in a year. Other regular problem animals are warthog, baboon - and lion. Yet in 2006 the people of Sobbe formed a communal conservancy whose aim is to conserve and manage wildlife while providing benefits for people. Their area is unlikely ever to attract tourism because unlike other nearby conservancies, Sobbe is 40km from the Kwando River and has no river front, no wide

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