A cheaper plan to stop poachers: Give them real jobs

Changing attitudes

If farmers agree not to poach and to adopt conservation-friendly methods, they gain "compliance bonuses" and access to the prices offered by COMACO, which normally exceed the local market rate. Extension officers show local villagers the benefits of farming organically, building high-yield log beehives, and growing multiple crops to avoid seasonal food shortages that might drive them to hunt or cut down trees to make charcoal.

Veronica Banda, a villager in Mfuwe, Zambia, who cares for 15 dependents, thought the COMACO officers were "mad people" when they asked her to abandon "slash and burn" farming, she said in a mixture of English and Nyanja, the local language. But now she's selling rice and peanuts to the program and was recently able to buy some goats with the profits, she said.

The program last year poured $250,000 into buying commodities from more than 40,000 farmers who are organized into more than 3,000 producer groups throughout eastern Zambia. Rice, honey, and peanut butter are taken from thirty-two local trading depots to three regional trading centers for processing.

The project has hired a new salesperson to navigate the marketing challenges of modern supermarkets. "We've got to make it healthy, high-quality, and presentable," Lewis says, sounding equal parts conservationist, businessman, and preacher as he explains the program's vision.

Alongside the expensive imports from Europe and South Africa, the honey section of Spar supermarket in the capital city of Lusaka also features orange and yellow plastic containers with the COMACO motto "It's Wild!" The program recently inked a deal to supply products to all of South African supermarket giant Shoprite's Zambia outlets.

The program has also built village-based safari bush camps to generate revenue.

The program is four years away from breaking even, Lewis projects, and still relies on funding from charitable organizations and donor governments.

But it has retrained over 350 poachers, at a cost of about $280 per person, Lewis says. By comparison, he says, finding and arresting a poacher costs the government's Wildlife Authority more than $2,000 on average.

Complimentary approaches

It's a carrot-and-stick approach to reducing poaching that complements the government's enforcement efforts, says Whiteson Daka, the program's regional coordinator. "Poachers are really productive people, only they have no alternative way of earning a living," Daka noted, displaying a homemade muzzleloader surrendered by a poacher. "It is not an easy career."

Still, some staff members acknowledge that running a sustainable, efficient business while also persuading people to save wildlife and land is a constant challenge.

Ms. McRobb, of the South Luangwa Conservation Society, praises COMACO but has doubts about whether it will truly transform poachers or simply lead them to farm and poach simultaneously.

That's why Lewis and his colleagues are putting significant effort into documenting and analyzing their results, in hopes of persuading skeptics and attracting not only donor money, but investor capital. Airborne survey teams are assessing local wildlife impact, researchers from Cornell University are analyzing COMACO's data, and business consultants from the University of California at Berkeley are studying the business model.

In the end, however, local residents will decide whether the program is working.

Anderson Mbewe, another former poacher, says he's left that life behind. At least as long as COMACO stays around, that is. "If you don't have food," he notes, "so many things can come into the brain."

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