Herds trample compounds, deplete water resources, and occasionally injure or kill humans. In addition, they raid crops. In a single night an elephant family can eat its way through a food crop meant to feed a human family for a year. If Western interests want Africans to conserve the wildlife over the long run, they must provide economic and social incentives to offset the losses and hardships. In the 1980s Zimbabwean initiated such incentives as a key part of the Campfire program.
Communities manage projects that use natural resources.
Quotas are set for individual species to ensure that the take is sustainable. A typical participating community leases a concession to hunt on its land to a private firm that operates big game safaris for foreign tourists. The safari operator is obligated to share his fees with nearby villages and district governments. A few communities have tried options other than safari hunting, such as harvesting and selling natural products like crocodile eggs or mopane worms, a traditional, protein-rich food. Among my teachers was Luciano, a game scout from the village of Bawa near the border where the Zambezi River flows from Zimbabwe into Mozambique on its way to the Indian Ocean.