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Elephants seldom come into the village, where cars travel and shoppers are busy buying their day’s produce. But they are not far behind small shops and buildings as they follow ancient paths they walked since before Mfuwe Village existed. The evidence is there in large footprints filled with rainwater, crushed stalks of tall grasses, and fresh piles of dung from the early morning.

We passed produce stands just off the tar road and headed toward the many small colorfully painted but worn-looking cement brick shops and stalls when our vehicles made a left turn into a compound. Stopping at an entrance of tall reed fencing on either side of the narrow road, we asked permission at a small guard shack at the street end to enter the South Luangwa Conservation Society property, now called Conservation South Luangwa (CSL). Rachel McRobb, the CEO, was expecting us. A guard wearing a dark green uniform and carrying a weapon stepped up to our car and then waved us through. This compound, busy with scouts and vehicles coming and going in the center of Mfuwe Village, belies the fact that CLS’s work is unpopular with some. CSL scouts always face an element of danger not only from wildlife but also from poachers determined to take their bounty out of the area. Scouts are killed by poachers every year in Africa. Rachel’s work is not popular with people who would sell even the last tusk of ivory for a price.

On the way to Rachel’s office, we passed two nearly ten-foot-tall towers with rusted rings of wire slipped over their posts. The towers looked like an art installation guarding the entrance to CSL Operations. But this, we quickly learned, was not avant-garde art. The towers of rusted rings were wire snares recovered from the bush where poachers meant to trap wildlife in the same national park we roamed through.

Up to this day, we were tourists, learning about the Zambian bush and culture. Because we were on safari drives in the national park, we saw only active clans of elephant families led by matriarchs, with grandmothers, aunties, cousins, and calves with occasional lonely bulls waiting around for the mating season. We hadn’t talked much about elephant poaching except to understand that it was a big problem in the valley.

While poachers use snares to obtain bushmeat, snares are indiscriminate. Placed near a well-used track to a watering hole, they will just as likely catch a towering giraffe as they will an elephant around the neck or foot. Snares also snag carnivores like hyenas, wild dogs, lions, and leopards.

Rachel started CSL when she was working at Mfuwe Lodge in the national park. She was horrified by the deaths and cruelty caused by snares and began to use her small income to pay a bounty for snares found in the park and returned to her. In 2003, her passion and determination won her a grant from the Royal Danish Embassy to create the South Luangwa Conservation Society (now Conservation South Luangwa) and hire scouts to patrol the park. Today, Rachel works hard to continue protecting elephants and wildlife. Her organization includes a law enforcement advisor, a veterinarian, a bush pilot, a human-wildlife conflict mitigation team, and Operations Manager Benson Kanyembo, supervisor of seventy-five scouts who patrol roads, pathways, deep bush, and the Luangwa River to catch poachers, collect snares, educate schoolchildren, and mitigate conflict between villagers, farmers, and elephants.

 Written by Patricia Cole

An Africa Hope Fund board member for 7 years, Pat is a writer and a conservation activist. After traveling to Zambia, she became dedicated to helping Africa Hope Fund provide education to the next generation of Africans and ensure their future by protecting wildlife. Find Patricia on Facebook and Twitter, or on her websites www.writepatwrite.com and www.patmcole.com.

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