Zimbabwe Is Selling Off Its Wildlife to Save Animals From Drought

Zimbabwe has put its wild animals up for sale, saying on Tuesday that it needs buyers to step in and save the beasts from a devastating drought.

There are no details yet on which animals would be put on sale or how much they would cost, but the southern African country is home to 10 national parks that are famed for their huge populations of elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinos, leopards, and buffalos. Members of the public "with the capacity to acquire and manage wildlife" — and enough land to hold the animals — were advised to get in touch to register an interest in taking them off government hands, the state Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said. "In light of the drought … Parks and Wildlife Management Authority intends to destock its parks' estates through selling some of the wildlife," the authority said in a statement.

A drought across the region has left more than 4 million people in Zimbabwe needing aid, hitting the crops they rely on for food and export earnings, from maize to tobacco. It has also exacerbated an economic crisis in the cash-strapped country that has largely been deserted by foreign donors since 1999, a move largely sparked by land reforms that saw white-owned property seized and redistributed.

Selling the animals would give some of them a new home and ease financial pressure on the parks authority, which says it receives little government funding and struggles to get by on what it earns through hunting and tourism. It asked interested Zimbabweans to get in touch and did not mention foreign buyers. Parks authority spokeswoman Caroline Washaya-Moyo would not say whether the animals could be exported or how many it wanted to sell.

There was no immediate comment from the wildlife groups that protested loudly last year when Zimbabwe exported 60 elephants, half of them to China, where the animals are prized for their tusks.

About 54,000 of Zimbabwe's 80,000 elephants live in the western Hwange National Park, more than four times the number it is supposed to hold, the agency says. The drought is expected to worsen an already critical water shortage in Hwange, which has no rivers and relies on donors to buy fuel to pump out of underground wells.

The privately owned Zimbabwe Independent newspaper reported in February that Bubye Conservancy, a private game park in southern Zimbabwe, could be forced to kill 200 lions to reduce over-population.

Many hunters have stayed away from Zimbabwein recent months, with Bubye general manager Blondie Leathem telling the Independentthat since the furor over the killing of Cecil, a rare black-maned lion, by a US dentist last year. Walter Palmer, a lifelong big-game hunter from Minnesota, sparked a global controversy when he killed Cecil outside Hwange last summer. Cecil was a prized attraction at the park and was being closely studied as part of a research project on endangered lions.

Zimbabwe had previously called for Palmer's extradition for the killing of Cecil, but in September announced he could not be charged since he had the requisite hunting permits. The dentist was vilified in the US after his identity was released, and he admitted to having killed the lion. He took a two-month hiatus from work after animal activists and vigilantes directed a wave of threats and vitriol at his office, family, and home.

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