More than 100,000 people live within five kilometres of Nkhotakota’s boundaries, making it imperative that they can sustainably access the reserve’s resources, and benefit from its existence. The relationship with the community continues to be an area of focus and is showing a strong and steady improvement.
Aside from 358 community meetings, four District Council workshops were conducted in 2023, raising awareness around the need to collaborate in dealing with issues concerning wildlife protection.
Given the need to secure the area and prevent human-wildlife conflict, fencing was a top priority when African Parks began its management partnership. Stakeholder meetings were held with local chiefs, to provide them with information on the fence route, why it was being implemented, how it would be used and the benefits of having the fence in place. As a result, the community welcomed the fence and the protection that it provided in helping to mitigate human-wildlife conflict.
However, fence vandalism is a challenge, as it leads to increased human-wildlife conflict (HWC) incidents when wildlife escapes the reserve. Efforts to mitigate this problem continue, with regular fence maintenance and community engagement to raise awareness of the risks of fence vandalism.
Educational opportunities around Nkhotakota are critical in terms of helping communities realise the value of the reserve. For example, Book Aid International and African Parks have collaborated in the Reading around the Reserve programme, which has provided 71 schools around Nkhotakota with 24,000 high-quality books to support and enrich their education.
A scholarship programme takes place annually, paying school fees for more than 120 orphaned and/or vulnerable students so they can continue their secondary and tertiary school education. In 2023, eight teachers in eight schools were supported and 1,277 students from 35 schools visited the reserve: the reduced number of students was due to fuel scarcity and price increases. A further 2,697 community members took part in environmental awareness-raising visits.
Our resource use programme ensures that community members living on the reserve’s boundary benefit by being granted the rights to harvest natural resources within the protected area without compromising its ecological integrity. Mushrooms, bamboo, palm fronds, thatch grass, flying termites and medicinal herbs are sustainably harvested, benefitting over 7,000 people.
Five enterprise portfolios have continued, including beekeeping, chilli farming, dried mango processing, irrigation farming (to sustain vegetable crops in the dry season) and goat pass-on. Over 9,000 community members are engaged in enterprise initiatives, including over 650 beekeepers and four groups trained in dried mango processing. An exciting success story in 2023 was the management of 713 bee colonies that yielded over 3.5 tonnes of honey. Bees are an essential part of the ecosystem, given safe shelter both in the reserve and the surrounding communities.
Communities and schools planted almost 70,000 fruit and indigenous tree seedlings during 2023, the slight drop in numbers as a result of a shift in focus to natural regeneration initiatives.