Top veterinary team to investigate Gonarezhou park

A team of agriculturalists undertook a fact-finding mission on Monday to determine the extent of illegal land occupation in Gonarezhou, one of Zimbabwe’s foremost national parks. Gonarezhou, a tourist haven in the country’s southeastern Lowveld, was recently demarcated for resettlement under the government’s controversial fast-track programme.

Although Masvingo governor Josiah Hungwe had been quoted as saying that only land adjacent to the park would be settled, the weekly ‘Zimbabwe Independent’, citing a senior National Parks provincial officer, recently reported that the land being acquired was within the national park.

Agricultural sources told IRIN that the team, including officials from the Department of Veterinary Science (DVS), had embarked on the mission in response to unconfirmed reports that thousands of head of cattle are grazing within the park, home to endangered species and rare eco-systems. “The big fear is foot-and-mouth (disease), cattle can contract it from the wildlife and vice-versa,” a source within the Zimbabwe Cattle Producer’s Association (ZCPA) told IRIN.

The demarcation of part of the world-renowned park came barely two months after the signing of a transfrontier agreement between Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa which encompasses Gonarezhou as a regional conservation area. The sudden change of land use at Gonarezhou, without consulting the other signatories to the agreement, could scuttle the creation of a vast game reserve which includes Gazaland in Mozambique and the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

Conservationists are concerned that the removal of fences around the park and human settlement would have a catastrophic affect on the wildlife. That, they said, would likely put Zimbabwe’s ailing tourism industry in further jeopardy.