The Urban Elephant Threat: A Case of Binga Centre, Northwest Zimbabwe

During Zimbabwe's Fast-track Land Reform Program launched in 2000, Binga Town had to deal with herds of elephants occasionally roaming into the residential areas. This chapter analyses the causes of the urban human-elephant conflict using Binga as a case study. To achieve this, it analyses how the land reform programme contributed to the conflict; analyses the nature of the conflict and how people responded to the urban elephant threat. It establishes that the Fast-track Land Reform Programme led to human invasion of elephant habitats which increased human-elephant conflict. Elephants raided crops and the resettled farmers retaliated by illegally killing the animals. Elephants fled from the danger of poachers in the bush and encroached on urban landscapes in search of temporary refuge. Urban dwellers tolerated the risks posed by the presence of small herds of roaming elephants because they did not face the hardship of rural farmers whose crops were destroyed by crop-raiding elephants. There is need for Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) officials to address the root causes of the problem and arm residents with rubber bullet guns of chilli pepper spray guns for protection.