Military has important role in Environmental Education and Conservation
Lawrence Ookeditse
The Botswana Defence Force (BDF) has become a vital part of the environment and wildlife conservation drive in this country. Speaking at the opening plenary session of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA) Annual Conference hosted by the University of Botswana Tuesday morning, Major General Pius Mokgware said as a Defence Force they have to “protect or support the national interests of this country”. To this end, they have developed various strategies to combat poaching, meet certain challenges and have achieved some successes.
“Wildlife is one of those national interests and our role is to ensure that the wildlife grows”, Major Gen. Mokgware said arguing that wildlife influences tourism thus is important to the economy of the country. The BDF’s involvement, while not limited to, is largely on anti-poaching activities. “In the early 1980s there was a lot of poaching and the government called in the BDF in 1986 to assist civil authorities”, Major Gen. Mokgware said, also explaining that the main concentration of their involvement was initially at Linyanti and Kwando in the northern part of the country but has since spread to other parts.
He also explained that they have a troop concentration of about 1200 men and do vehicle and air patrol day and night. From their experience, he said poaching was in two main categories, for subsistence and commercial purposes. The former is largely done by locals with either snares or traps targeting small game for ‘the pot’ or simple rifles. The latter, he said, is largely perpetrated by foreigners with sophisticated weapons and networks. “They can come from as far as Central Africa and have sophisticated networks going far as Europe. Commercial poachers target the cats and big game largely”.
The incentives for the commercial poachers seem alluring since the proceeds of their crime have lucrative markets. “We have found out that a young lion sells for about $75, a kilogram of rhino horn for $600”, he said. Thus, most are willing to risk even their lives to poach. The commercial poachers are skilled riflemen largely as Major Mokgware explained they use “weapons of war, military tactics and most have military backgrounds”.
Engaging with such nefarious persons, being the fine marksmen that some of them are, a military approach had to be comprehensively drawn to deter, where possible such activities.”We do so by patrolling all wildlife areas. The goal is deterrence and when it fails we take appropriate measures”. Where it is not possible for deterrence to work Major Mokgware said then it might mean they had to “arrest” the culprits, drawing laughter from the participants who seemed to anticipate that who would perhaps say ‘shoot’.
The other approach he said they have embarked upon is that of environmental education. “The idea is to develop skills and attitude so people can live side by side with animals”. In detailing their environmental education approach, he said they often seek to teach school going kids about wildlife as it is best to teach those who are still young so as to ensure “they grow into responsible and good citizens”.
In evaluating whether their approaches have been a success or a failure, he said they rely on a number of indices, among them is the level of tourism contribution to the countries annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the levels of local communities’ understanding of conservation of wildlife. A healthy contribution to GDP in this case becomes an indicator that efforts are to a large extent successful.
Meanwhile, challenges are abound as some are structurally woven into our socio-cultural practices. He said in our culture, some animals, the cats especially, are hunted for their skins for the coronation of chiefs and are also hunted as part of initiation ceremonies, thus, balancing this with conservation becomes challenging. Also, some animals compete with farmers for land thus they destroy farm produce. Elephants in particular have been notorious for destroying crops while lions and leopards have a history of devouring livestock.
Major Mokgware was presenting on the topic, ‘Role of the Military (BDF) in Conservation’. He started his discussion with a rhetorical ‘why the military? What has it to do with education?’ multi-pronged question to the amusement of the gathering. The Conference ends 16 July 2009 and will see quite a number of stakeholders from across the Southern African region make presentations on Environmental Conservation.
Leave a comment