Water
for
people...
Water for people…means more land for nature
CRCI is an integral part of a larger effort across the landscape to optimise land resources, improve community livelihoods, and restore wildlife areas. An important aspect of allocating community grazing land to rhino conservation is ensuring that the remaining land is productive, for people to grow food and for domestic livestock to graze.
CRCI's innovative human-wildlife conflict fencing and the rhino buffer areas stop predators from entering communal lands and elephants from raiding crops...but water is still a limiting factor for growing food for people, and for keeping livestock hydrated.
Given the area’s lack of natural surface and erratic rainfall, providing increased access to clean water is paramount. This is done by carrying out geological surveys, drilling wells, or boreholes, 40 - 140 metres deep! These are then equipped with manual bush pumps or solar pumps (usually with a tank and stand). Often these pumping sites have a concrete trough or lead to a natural reservoir for domestic livestock to also drink. We are upgrading this idea by establishing food gardens around newly drilled sites. This entails land preparation, fencing and implementing irrigation tools, including taps, hosepipes and drip irrigation.
These food gardens provide domestic water supplies, water for livestock and water for growing food.
Garden sites (in early stage and completed) include:
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Kapanyana
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Mlevu
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Gwenga
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Manjelengwa
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Vulashaba
Establishing more food gardens on communal land bordering Hwange National Park and buffer zones, or community rhino sanctuaries, is a top priority to ensure landscape level sustainability of CRCI.
Improving access to water saves local people time and energy, especially women and girls who are usually responsible for this domestic task. Hours can be spent every day fetching water to cook, clean and drink. This sometimes means girls stop attending school to dedicate themselves to walking several miles, collecting water.
Contact us to find out more about our our community work, including drilling water wells here
