THE Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority says the El Niño-induced drought severely impacted on its hippos, but denied reports that numbers are declining in the Zambezi River.
Some wildlife conservation groups recently expressed concern over the reported decline in the hippo population mainly in mid-Zambezi.
ZimParks spokesperson Tinashe Farawo said surveys, however, proved that the country’s hippo population had not declined.
“We are encouraging those people that we work with to ensure that whatever communication they put out there, we are on the same page, so that we speak with one voice,” Farawo said yesterday.
“I am sure everyone is aware of COP [Conference of Parties] 2019, where there has been a push to uplift our hippo into Appendix 1, without any evidence. And this kind of information would definitely damage our reputation.
“We are also saying people must leave the interpretation of data to experts. And they must also leave it to the authorities. And when people assist us to do surveys or whatever activity that we are doing, it does not give them the right to mislead our stakeholders.”
He said the department was, instead, struggling with the increase in the hippo population.
“We are calling upon our partners to consult widely, especially with us, before they go out there to communicate misleading information, which might cause problems for us in the future,” he said.
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“If they can’t interpret it correctly, they must leave it to our experts or our statisticians and our scientists because wildlife is science-based, it is evidence-based.”
Last year, ZimParks and the African Wildlife Foundation conducted a hippo census in the country.
The last hippo censuses in Zimbabwe were carried out in 1996, 1998 and 2002.
