FCF initiates efforts to help villages bordering Game Reserve

by our correspondent

The Friedkin Conservation Fund (FCF) and the Manyoni District Council recently joined forces to distribute 20 tonnes of maize to 8 villages bordering the Kizigo/Muhesi Game Reserve, in southern Tanzania.

The maize purchase was financed by Tanzania Game Trackers Safaris (TGTS) and Wengert Windrose Safaris (WWS), both of whom are represented by FCF in the areas of Community Development, Anti-poaching and Field Research. The maize was to go towards alleviating shortfalls caused by this year’s poor rains.

This exercise represented FCF’s first real foray into community assistance around Kizigo/Muhesi Game Reserve and was a good opportunity to lay foundations for cooperation with both the villages bordering the reserve and the Manyoni District Council.

FCF has been involved in working with communities since its inception in 1997, mainly in the areas inside and surrounding the TGTS blocks of Monduli Juu and Maswa Mbono and Maswa Kimali. From 2003, FCF is also representing WWS, bringing to 14 the number of hunting blocks around Tanzania where FCF operates.

In Manyoni District, TGTS and WWS have 4 blocks between them in the Kizigo/Muhesi Game Reserve. Since the beginning of the year, the Community Development Coordinator for FCF, Mr. Dominyk Lever, has been travelling to all of the hunting blocks leased by TGTS and WWS in order to introduce the communities to FCF with the hope that partnerships from a community development perspective can be forged into the future.

FCF prides itself on the partnerships it forms with villages and is not in the business of handouts. FCF makes it clear from the beginning that funding for community projects is dependent on assurances from the villages that illegal activities such as meat poaching will be brought under control.

Accompanying the CDC for FCF on the recent visit to some of the villages surrounding Kizigo-Muhesi Game Reserve was the District Game Officer for Manyoni, Mr. Ally Kibwana. Mr. Kibwana was integral in helping identify which villages FCF should be working with based on proximity to the reserve and impacts from an illegal activity perspective.

In all, eight villages were singled out (Chikola, Heka, Sasilo, Mpola, Nkonko, Iseke, Mpapa and Simbanguru), each receiving two and a half tones of maize to be distributed through the office of the Village Secretary.

In Simbanguru, a particularly poor village on the south eastern border of Kizigo/Muhesi Game Reserve, villagers immediately came forward with information regarding illegal wood collecting that was taking place inside the reserve not far from Simbanguru. This report is now being looked into by the FCF’s Anti-poaching Team in collaboration with the Manyoni District Council.

Fears that this exercise would be seen merely as a handout were allayed by the enthusiasm that greeted FCF at each of the villages. There is no doubt that the villages in question are suffering due to poor rains and that 2.5 tonnes of maize isn’t going to solve the problem of hunger in the long term. What it does do is show that FCF and the Manyoni District Council are in a position to assist the villages surrounding Kizigo/Muhesi Game Reserve from now and into the future and provide them with alternatives to illegal activities inside the reserve.

Caption: The Manyoni District Game Officer, Mr. Ally Kibwana, addressing the residents of Simbanguru Village.

Last modified: November 14, 2003.
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