African Parks has disclosed that it has invested about US$ 2.8 million in the Kafue National Park in order to make it more attractive so it can draw in more investors and visitors.
African Parks Country Director James Milanzi said the organisation has built about 450km of roads, bought five vehicles, a six-wing plane being used for surveillance, a helicopter being used for re-deployment and law enforcement uniforms for all the people working in the park.
Milanzi noted that African Parks has established themselves on the ground since the signing of a one year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with government worth about US$3.7million noting that it has also put up signposts in Lusaka in order to provide a visual impression of what African Parks is doing to support tourism in Kafue.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Milanzi said the roads would help increase tourism operations because currently there is no connectivity adding that the role of African Parks is to demonstrate what the organisation will be doing once government signs a long-term agreement with them.
He mentioned that the organisation has collared about 15 elephants, which means that it should be able to track where those animals will be going noting that the collars are in real time so their whereabouts will be known at all times adding that people can be warned if the animals are heading towards villages and necessary mitigations can be put in place.
“For a long time nobody knows the movements of elephants, whether they are just confined to Kafue National Park or these elephants do move outside the country”, he said.
He noted that past reports indicated that some elephants from Kafue National Park had left the park and were in Solwezi therefore, there is need to collar such elephants in order to understand where they are going.
He added that collaring the animals would also assist in understanding the human wild life conflict because when some elephants are close to villages, they can destroy properties.
Milanzi said what the organisation has done is a demonstration of what it is capable of doing if it signed a long-term agreement with government adding that it has a business plan for the next five years and if the agreement is signed, African Parks will starting next year invest not less than US$ 7 million per year in Kafue National Park.
He said negotiations are still ongoing and the organisation is in the process of sending in government evaluators to review the works noting that African Parks is comfortable that it has made the preliminary requisites that government has set.
He noted that the organisation was confident that government will sign the long-term agreement and African Parks is happy with what it has done in one year and what it has demonstrated it is able to replicate.
