PROFESSIONAL game guide, Samuel Nkomo, will on Sunday embark on the epic 500km walk from the Matopos National Park to Victoria Falls to promote wildlife conservation.
Nkomo is the brains behind the Rhino Awareness Campaign Walk that would see him arriving in Victoria Falls on October 18.
He will walk along the main road between Bulawayo and the Victoria Falls with scheduled recesses enabling him to engage villagers on conservation issues.
Nkomo will also pass through the Hwange National Park and the Painted Dog Conservation Centre along his route.
Zimbabwe has one of the highest rhino poaching rates in the world and various reasons have been attributed to this state of affairs.
One of the major reasons is that the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority is heavily underfunded largely because the government is broke.
The authority has been forced to cut back on conservation programmes and its dwindling workforce is poorly resourced.
This was badly exposed last year when over 100 elephants were killed at the Hwange National Park through cyanide poisoning by a syndicate of poachers.
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The country’s law enforcement agents came hard on villagers that were accused of poisoning the elephants, but the reaction left some not convinced that the real brains behind the syndicates had been accounted for.
Such is the complexity of wildlife crimes that serious collaboration between the State and private citizens is required to deal with the rising problem of poaching especially of elephants and rhinos.
Rhino horns and elephants tusks have a ready market especially in Asian countries.
Nkomo, is a celebrated professional in the tourism sector in South Africa where he has been accorded a couple of national awards, but it is now the turn of his own country to rally behind his work.
Ordinary Zimbabweans can support him by walking with him for short distances to make his walk worthwhile and help raise awareness about the environment along the way.
He has to be applauded for taking the initiative to pioneer the 500km walk and his story needs to inspire more Zimbabweans to take a stand against the destruction of the environment.
