Management Skills:

  Developing a skilled workforce, setting management targets and using data to improve management performance

A key ADMADE objective is to manage wildlife numbers for annual sustained harvests to support a successful and competitive safari industry as well as to diversify other legal sources of income from wildlife through both consumptive and non-consumptive uses.  This requires that the community through its Community Resource Boards sets clear, achievable targets for paid management staff, like Village Scouts, as well as for community groups supporting these efforts.  It also requires that these efforts be supported by a skilled workforce.  Before CBNRM, this work was performed primarily by Government staff.  Under ADMADE, the community now assumes a major responsibility for these tasks.  The College has helped to lead this transition by introducing appropriate training courses so communities can effectively carry out these responsibilities.

A major part of this training is directed at Village Scouts who provide much of the policing, monitoring and public education services regarding natural resource management on community lands.  The College has discovered that a wonderfully rich pool of talent exists within rural communities for carrying out this work and people chosen by the community to serve as Village Scouts are highly motivated to learn skills and apply them for the benefit of their communities.  Research by the College has shown that in most instances Village Scouts actually out-perform Government scouts and yet are far more economical to maintain and support because they are local residents.  A key determinant to their performance is qualified and skilled leadership.  Again, Unit Leaders (ZAWA) and/or Unit Managers (CRB-employed) provide much of this leadership on a day-to-day basis, both of whom are trained by the College.

Some of the basic skills local residents learn as Village Scouts include the following:

  1. Conducting law enforcement patrols, using map-based datasheets to record information, including animal sightings, land use disturbances, illegal hunting, and bush fires.
  2. Monitoring all legal forms of hunting activity using four different dataforms which collectively provide much of the data used for setting hunting quotas
  3. Conducting wildlife counts at waterholes and on bicycle transects
  4. Conducting public awareness campaigns on wildlife management issues and problems
  5. Undertaking court cases for people apprehended for violating the Wildlife Act
  6. Carrying out crop protection from wild animals

Through a co-management agreement between ZAWA and the CRB, management targets are set and through the work of village scouts, management staff and local leaders, these targets are monitored.  Meeting these targets require verifiable data, which ZAWA staff trained at the College are qualified to assess through routine audits and inspection of CBNRM results for a given CRB.   Use of management results generated from village scouts helps local leaders to assess ways field staff should be directed in the future to improve overall management performance.  The maps below illustrate this point by comparing patrolling intensity in relation to areas where wildlife revenues are earned. By comparing the two maps, local leaders identified a problem where scout patrols were not directed in areas of high priority.

The map on the right provides the locations where animals were hunted by safari hunters, who contribute the primary source of income for the communities to support their development activities.  The map on the left provides a pattern of village scout patrolling intensity. A simple visual comparison reveals patrolling effort does not correspond to the grids where most of the income is being generated.  Local leaders reviewing these data spotted this problem and provided more clear guidelines for scout patrols in their area.  Some of these lessons that emerged from this type of simple data analysis, by using both maps or  information recorded on dataforme, are summarized below.

Day patrols should be limited to snare patrols, waterhole patrols, or to community visits for public education or crop damage control.
Management targets should include complete coverage by scout patrols for areas where wildlife resources are found, having not less than four people on a patrol, patrol durations not less than three days, and verification of these results with data forms properly filled on every patrol and submitted to the unit leader.

 

KEY Lesson:  Community-collected data provides the basis for community leadership to assess their management results and plan for ways to improve management performance.  An important basis for this assessment is to have clear management targets that help maintain high standards for resource management.

KEY Lesson: Local residents can provide a major part of the management services for a Game Management Area if selection of management staff is based on merit, motivation and qualification and if training institutions are available to maintain an on-going effort to develop and improve local skills in resource management.

KEY Lesson: Community authorities, namely CRBs, require a sufficient portion of revenue shares from legal uses of wildlife to adequately enumerate management staff and provide periodic bonuses or pay raises when management results justify such actions.

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