Patrol boat arrives safely in the Zambezi Valley

The new "aluminium flat bottom" patrol boat has arrived safely in the Zambezi Valley today!

Funded by Zambezi Elephant Fund and Virgin Unite, the patrol boat was launched onto the Zambezi River this afternoon and will be operated by The Zambezi Society under Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority instruction for all anti-poaching deployments and river patrols along the Mana Pools river frontage.

Thanks go to all involved in the continued collaborative efforts to protect and conserve the Middle Zambezi Valley Biosphere Reserve and the Mana-Sapi-Chewore UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

How Dropbox Showcase helps Zambezi Elephant Fund present their mission

Original article published on Dropbox's blog here. 

The Zambezi Valley of Zimbabwe contains a World Heritage Site and the longest contiguous wilderness area in Southern Africa. Though the region is home to one of Africa’s remaining elephant strongholds, the Zambezi Valley has lost 40% of its elephant population since 2001. In 2016 alone, they lost one elephant every four days to poaching.

It’s this crisis that inspired a heroic effort to stop the poaching. Formed in 2015, Zambezi Elephant Fund (ZEF) brings together a passionate group of individuals, NGOs, tour operatives, and The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. And as you might imagine, trying to coordinate the logistics of their complex work takes an incredible amount of collaboration.

“Instead of working on this issue in our own ways, we’ve combined our efforts in order to most effectively prevent poaching,” said Richard Maasdorp, Coordinator, Zambezi Elephant Fund (ZEF). 

“By bringing together the group’s diverse set of skills and perspectives, we and our partners have developed highly effective anti-poaching activities and have started to contain this crisis.”

— Richard Maasdorp, Coordinator, Zambezi Elephant Fund

Though this collaborative model is rare across Africa, the founders of The Zambezi Elephant Fund are convinced it’s one of the main reasons for their success. Here’s how their team unites different parties in pursuit of a common goal—and uses Dropbox to make that work easier.

Training rangers and clearing paths

The campaign against poaching begins by training the people on the front lines: the rangers. The ZEF team provides them with food, equipment, and transportation to the areas known to have poaching activity. The rangers patrol on foot, looking for human footprints, fires, vultures—any indication that poachers have been in the area.

“We call these areas ‘hot spots,’” explains Richard. “Based on the season, we know where poachers are likely to be. In the rainy season, they tend to move along river lines, following elephant paths. In the dry season, the hot spots change.”

In the dry season, Richard says the team looks for waterholes and springs inland because elephants tend to congregate there in search of water. In the hilly areas, poachers move up and down the steep hills using generation-old elephant paths. These elephants have figured out the easiest way to climb up and down the steep slopes.

The more ground the rangers can cover in these hot spots, the better. Because even if the poachers aren’t confronted directly during a patrol, they get nervous when they see the rangers’ footprints. The rangers’ food, transport, and equipment—including radios, tents, packs, and mosquito nets—are made possible by groups and individuals committed to anti-poaching.

Much of the area where poaching takes place is remote and difficult to access. To get rangers in there as quickly as possible, ZEF’s partners have been using earth-moving equipment donated by their supporters to create anti-poaching paths.

Patrolling from the rivers and skies

It’s estimated that nearly 50% of these poachers come from Zambia, crossing the Zambezi River to get to the elephants. To help reduce these numbers, ZEF has funded a patrol boat to intercept the poachers and prevent them from even reaching the shore.

“One of our partner organizations, Flying for Wildlife, fly personally owned small aircrafts looking for signs of fires and carcasses, giving us coverage in the most inaccessible areas,” says Richard. “We are looking to fund a dedicated light aircraft for their use.”

Collecting anonymous tips

There is also an anonymous tip program that enables witnesses to use messaging apps to send anonymous tips about who might be poaching, or hiding ivory before it’s shipped. If this leads to the arrest of people involved in illegal wildlife crime, then a mobile payment is sent as a reward to the informants. This has proven to be a very successful program.

Presenting the mission and showing the impact

When the work you do happens in such a remote area, how do you communicate the impact you’re having? More important, how do you bring in more people from around the world, and invite them to participate in your mission? For ZEF, email attachments and bulletins were losing impact.

Being able to vividly illustrate both the majesty of the elephants they’re protecting and the urgent need for help is key to reaching new supporters. To help people understand the ZEF mission, it takes more than text to tell the story. So they turned to Dropbox Showcase, a new product introduced in October 2017.

“Dropbox Showcase helps us bring people into our world. It helps us explain what we are doing visually, it helps to guide people through the work being done often thousands of miles away,” says Richard. “If you can’t feel the dusty path under your feet, the sun warming your back, if you can’t hear the elephants drinking at the waterhole nearby—water gushing through their trunks and down their throats—then it’s up to us to help you understand our work from afar, to understand why we care, why you should too, and what we’re doing to fix this poaching problem. It’s no small task and Dropbox Showcase helps us achieve this.”

One of the key features Richard appreciates about Showcase is the ability to customize the presentation for different audiences. When they share a project externally, Showcase lets them highlight different aspects and tailor them to the interests of the recipient. They can quickly make tweaks to add details and reorder files so that the priority information is right at the top.

“Dropbox Showcase helps us bring people into our world. It helps us explain what we are doing visually, it helps to guide people through the work being done often thousands of miles away.”

ZEF also uses Showcase internally to communicate across their entire organization. After workshops and strategy meetings, they often need to share takeaways with the rest of the team and partners. Richard says they find it much more engaging and motivating to present this information as a showcase rather than ordinary meeting minutes.

Dear friend of the Zambezi Elephant Fund

Here we are at the end of another year and a bright 2018 looks like a very promising for our new Zimbabwe. 

Thanks to your overwhelming generosity and support in 2017, we are delighted to share with you that Zambezi Elephant Fund, together with various collaborative partners, (including and in no particular order, Zambezi Society, Global Wildlife Conservation, The Tashinga Initiative, Matusadona Anti-Poaching Project, Bushlife Support Unit, Elephant Crisis Fund, Flying for Wildlife and Kariba Animal Welfare Fund Trust), has recorded many achievements we can all be proud of.

• A year-end Elephant Management workshop (1st December) with Zim Parks and stakeholders confirmed that, with your support and our joint on-the-ground efforts, there has been a decline in year-on-year observed elephant poaching across the entire landscape. This success has re-doubled our motivation to further improve the situation and to guard against complacency

• Rangers up-skilled, trained and supplied with rations

• New tracks opened up in previously impassable areas for deployment vehicles

• Increased community-based informer networks

• An order placed for a motorised river patrol boat

• Aerial monitoring and surveillance

• Completion of a Strategic Anti-poaching Plan for Lower Zambezi Valley in conjunction with Zim Parks

• Temporary and remote satellite camps set up at known hot spots to allow rangers to spend up to 12 days at a time patrolling and monitoring

• ZAVARU, the permanent 24-man reaction base station, funded jointly by Zambezi Elephant Fund and Tashinga Trust Initiative and built in 2016 at a strategic point in Mana Pools National Park, continues to improve the effectiveness of rangers

• Four workshops held with area managers, local communities, Zim Parks personnel and volunteers to improve relations and operations management

As always, we are extremely grateful for your donations and support and hope you can continue to help reinforce the Zambezi Elephant Fund’s efforts in the coming year. We look forward to working with you to help keep the Zambezi Valley and its wild and wonderful inhabitants safe. Please try and visit us in 2018!

With our warmest wishes for Happy Holidays and we’ll be in touch again in the New Year!

From the wilderness to the city

Richard Maasdorp, administrator of the Zambezi Elephant Fund (ZEF) in Zimbabwe, recently took his free spirit and adventurous soul on a city-to-city tour from Europe to the United States. His mission? To talk about elephants, to meet interesting and interested people, to discuss exciting new ideas in conservation and to come back with some fresh forward thinking.  

Here, he reflects on some of the notable take-outs from his trip.

I travelled to eight cities – Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, Chicago, Austin, Houston, New York and Washington DC – over a three week period and had twenty four different discussions with individuals and groups. Many of the people I met had connections with Nicci and John Stevens and these same people have supported the Zambezi Elephant Fund from its inception in February 2015.

Now, almost 3 years on, the respect for the work that the Stevens have done, and continue to do, along with many other like-minded people, was reinforced at every encounter. I am very proud to be part of their team and equally grateful to be a part of the global team that they have formed. 

To meet so many people who care deeply about elephant, other animals and wilderness areas is nothing short of inspiring. As an organization and as individuals, we have sometimes felt alone and isolated – discovering that people on the other side of our fragile planet are still “with us” was a very special feeling.

I was most fortunate to have a few one-on-one discussions, which provided the time and space for candid critiques of the Zambezi Elephant Fund’s efforts and position. This invaluable input will be taken seriously and many of the ideas implemented – thank you.

We received many offers of “support from afar” in the areas of social media communications, printed marketing material, packaging requests for funding at a project level and communication with donors. Again, all gratefully received and we look forward to working together with the individuals who stepped forward with their suggestions.

It struck me, rather disappointedly, that the uniqueness of ZEF, supporting “pockets of passion” (several discreet organizations that quietly operate across the Zambezi Valley landscape), was seen as inefficient and as carrying too high an overhead. In fact, this is not the case at all and volunteers, who operate right on the ground, run many of the organizations. And all are guided by a stakeholder-driven Five Year Elephant Plan.

Thank you to each and every one of you who made this important journey a most valuable one, from my team at home in Zimbabwe to my kind hosts and ZEF’s generous supporters in Europe and America. I extend again the invitation to all of you who have not yet experienced Mana’s Magic: come and see it and feel it for yourself. We will take great pleasure in sharing the wonderful Zambezi Valley and its magnificent elephants, our global heritage to protect, with you and your families. 

Richard Maasdorp

“Listen to the sound of the sand sighing under the elephant’s silent footfall, as she walks past under the watchful eye of the full moon…”

We’ve accomplished so much together

Photograph courtesy of Mana Meadows

Not everyone is familiar with the term “collaboration” in conservation, but the Zambezi Elephant Fund (ZEF) is beginning to understand the full extent of its potential and impact. In its efforts to protect elephants from poaching in the Zambezi Valley of Zimbabwe, ZEF is going from strength to strength on a basis of networking, partnerships and teaming up. Notable “partners” include not only the remarkable people we have met (and are now privileged to work with) from truly inspiring conservation organisations or the brilliant on-the-ground action-takers, but ZEF is also thriving on the energy and drive of our behind-the-scenes overseers, on the kind donations from our generous supporters and on the warmth and encouragement of local and international communities.

The extent of much of this is not measurable. But a lot is and this update serves to keep you informed and to thank you, so much, for your kindness. Together, we can make positive, meaningful differences.

You actions make a difference!

Zambezi Elephant Fund works closely with the Zambezi Society, The Tashinga Initiative, Bushlife Support Unit, Flying for Wildlife, Matusadona Anti-Poaching Project (MAPP) and the Kariba Animal Welfare Fund Trust (KAWFT) to name a few. Each of the following implementing organisations has received funding grants from the Zambezi Elephant Fund for their vital work in anti-poaching.

The Tashinga Initiative completed the construction of a major anti-poaching ranger base at Mana Pools, 50% funded through the Zambezi Elephant Fund. Not only has the new ZAVARU ranger station provided a functional base from which to operate and a real morale-booster for those who use it, but it has also played a role in bringing together the many “pockets of passion” into an even stronger collaborative unit, standing shoulder to shoulder with our colleagues in the Zimbabwe National Parks Authority against poaching.

As many of you will know, a Toyota Land Cruiser pickup was purchased last year. Over the past twelve months, this sturdy anti-poaching vehicle has done an average of 3,000km per month in the Mana Pools and adjacent Nyakasanga Safari areas, deploying rangers and uplifting them back to the base, as well as providing a supportive presence and eyes on the ground.

Bushlife Support Unit, backed by its parent tourism company (Bushlife Safaris), was extremely successful in carrying out on-the-ground anti-poaching activities, especially during the 2016-2017 rainy season. With funding assistance, it was able to establish a network of wet-season fly camps in remote (and previously under-patrolled) areas of the Park, from which rangers were deployed.

Volunteers working for Flying for Wildlife have been deploying rangers on aerial patrols throughout the Zambezi Valley, continuing to provide a much-needed eye-in-the-sky surveillance operation.

The Matusadona Anti-Poaching Unit (MAPP) achieves excellent work with anti-poaching and undercover surveillance/intelligence in the Matusadona National Park and its surrounding settled lands as well as on Lake Kariba.

The Kariba Animal Welfare Fund Trust (KAWFT) carries out essential animal welfare and conservation work in and around Kariba town and on Lake Kariba.

There have been significant poacher arrests, plus numerous contacts and several successful arrests for the poaching of ivory or illegal possession of live wildlife or wildlife products. 

Photograph courtesy of Mana Meadows 

Our work isn’t done yet

In spite of the heaviest rainy season in decades, (providing potential “cover” for poachers) elephant poaching in Mana was at an all time low due to all collaborative efforts. Sadly, however, and only in the last couple of weeks, we have lost an elephant in the park and two others just beyond the Mana boundary. A recent drop-off in funding has impacted on certain initiatives such as the demobilisation of picket camps at known remote poaching hot spots.

A special place in all our hearts

Mana Pools takes bright and shining centre stage in a 230km contiguous stretch of wilderness along the Zambezi. It is a global wilderness treasure and up to all of us to protect it. We need to know we have done everything we can – at this time most especially for the elephant matriarchs, their families and their attendant wayward bulls, but, in the long run, for all of the region’s incredible wildlife and ecosystems.

What's the plan and what is needed right now? 

We now plan to strengthen the protection on both the northern (Zambia) and southern (rural communities) boundaries and we are seeking support to establish more fly camps and a support vehicle on the southern boundary. Interested in helping out on this project?

We require assistance with maintenance and running costs for a customised patrol boat (the purchase of the boat was possible thanks to the generosity of the Burgess family and Sir Richard Branson’s challenge to match his own pledge) for the Zambezi River as well as ongoing running costs of existing deployment vehicles. 

Further funding is required for the long-term supply of consumables for anti-poaching patrols facing combat situations in the field. Interested in helping out on this project?

Donate now and we’ll let you know exactly how your support is helping ZEF in our wildlife conservation efforts in this unique and wonderfully wild part of the world! We are deeply grateful to you for your ongoing encouragement and support and thank you most sincerely on behalf of the elephants and their wildlife friends, our implementing partners, the volunteers and rangers, for helping sustain the dream of keeping the Zambezi Valley safe and beautiful for all and for the future.

Thank you to our conservation partners.