Zambia’s Lower Zambezi National Park faced more than its fair share of problems since it first opened in 1983. Lying next to porous borders with Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the park – which spans more than 1,000 square miles – became a hub for illegal activities such as trophy poaching, bushmeat poaching, illegal mining of gold, and unregulated fishing along the Zambezi River.
With cases of human-wildlife conflict rising, and gunshots heard across the park most nights, in 1994, groups including safari operators and local communities around the park established the charity Conservation Lower Zambezi (CLZ) to help government authorities protect the Lower Zambezi National Park, which is home to an abundance of wildlife including lions, leopards, more than 400 different kinds of bird species, and numerous other endangered species.
Today, CLZ has a team of 100 who work 365 days a year to protect the park. More than half of those employees are scouts from the local communities that work alongside government rangers on patrols of up to two weeks at a time, following tracks or tip-offs as part of regular, canine, aerial, or marine units. Whether it’s by sniffing out bushmeat from the villages that surround the park, removing poachers’ snares, or scouting out signs of illegal mining, CLZ’s work ensures the park is both a safe haven for wildlife and a key economic asset for Zambia.
But decades of hard-won progress are now under direct threat from cuts to US overseas aid. Specifically, frozen financing from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has left a $900,000 (£680,000) hole in CLZ’s finances over the next four years. The past few months have left the charity “scrambling” to fill gaps where they can, says fundraising manager Frances Hannah, including by cutting the number of patrols it carries out and reducing activities in other programme areas.
“Since the freeze came in January, we’ve been playing chess with our funding to cover gaps where we can,” says Hannah. “The walls are closing in, and I don’t think anyone wants to discuss what kind of cuts we may have to make next, because it is not going to be good.”
The Lower Zambezi National Park is only a haven for wildlife because of the “support to the government and the constant surveillance” that CLZ and rangers are able to carry out, Hannah continues. But the threats to the park remain fundamentally the same as when it opened: “If you suddenly can’t be putting out 10 patrol teams a week, and you’re only putting out six, then there are going to be areas that are going to suffer,” she says.
CLZ’s story is far from unique. Leaked USAID files analysed by The Independent show that biodiversity-supporting, multi-year grants in Africa worth more than $300m were cancelled after contract terminations were confirmed in March – and that’s not even taking into account other conservation grants from agencies like USFWS and the State Department, which have also been ravaged.
Numerous organisations spoken to by The Independent, many of whom are continuing to do so anonymously over fear of possible reprisals from the US government, have described the devastating impacts that these cuts have had over the past six months. Their stories reveal the tenacity of aid workers in their drive to keep programmes going ever since the first “stop work” order on all foreign assistance was issued by the Trump administration on 24 January – and also reveal the impacts that aid cuts have had on global efforts to protect and restore the world’s wild places.
One conservation worker at a National Park in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, described how the park lost a grant worth north of $5m “functionally overnight”. Meanwhile, Charlie Mayhew, founder and CEO of British Conservation charity Tusk, told The Independent that a total of 40 Tusk project partners lost a total of $29.5m in funding.
“They’re all having to make immediate savings and quite drastic cost-cutting exercises,” says Mayhew. “Rural communities are being devastated by job redundancies, with one employed individual likely to be supporting up to 10 family members.”
Christof Schenck, Executive Director of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), is similarly reeling from major cuts to his own organisation’s finances. The FZS is one of the world’s most active conservation organisations, with an annual budget of around $50m and operations in 18 countries, termination of FZS’s USAID grant creates a $4.5m budget hole between now and 2027, while termination of its USFWS grant leaves another $4m gap between now and 2029.
“We have worked very well with US aid agencies for many years, and we were always impressed by how effective their conservation programs have been,” says Schenck. “We understand that aid could be more efficient, and more impact-orientated, but the current approach is hurting many successful projects, and we are very worried about the cuts.”
FZS carries out crucial conservation efforts in a number of countries, including law enforcement, surveillance of highly endangered species, and managing human-wildlife conflict. While the charity has so far made some employees redundant, and cut some programmes, it is largely sustaining itself by tapping into reserves that the charity has amassed over many years. They know that they will not be able to keep doing this indefinitely, but simply terminating conservation work is not really an option: “We can’t just stop now and leave, for example, black rhino populations or elephants without any protection,” says Schenck.
US government funding represented a particularly vital lifeline for conservation programmes in Africa because it is both a region of the world, and sector, that struggles to attract required levels of investment.
