Bubye Valley Conservancy
BEYOND ZI ABWE’S CURRENT media image of doo nd gloom there is a shin ng light in i the country’s sustainable wild tilization field: the Bubye Valley Conserv ncy (BVC). This success story y would never have been told were it not for paying sport hunters. Therein lies the secret to the project’s success.
Significant among its achievements has been the establishment of large, flourishing populations of black rhino, elephant and lion. This 3 740sq km landmass (in excess of 850 000 acres) is situated in what is termed Zimbabwe’s southern lowveld region, one of the country’s hottest and driest areas. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 40°C (104F°) and the average recorded rainfall over 45 years is 347mm (13.6ꞌꞌ).
Totally unsuited to agriculture or ecotourism, and despite the low rainfall, the BVC has an exceedingly high nutrient ecosystem that ably supports large numbers of medium-size herbivores, particularly blue wildebeest and Burchell’s zebra. This in turn means high densities of predators can potentially be
