Local Communities and Wildlife Conservation in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s community-based conservation model, which brings together peasant farmers in a tourism-focused approach to wildlife management, has enjoyed limited success since its inception during the mid-1980s, due to a number of reasons. There has been increased human-wildlife conflict, and it is hard to enforce rules against poaching. Community involvement in wildlife conservation is one of the major factors influencing the success of integrated conservation and development projects. These projects can fail if there is lack of ownership of the project.