Dynamics and underlying causes of illegal bushmeat trade in Zimbabwe

The prevalence and impacts of the illegal trade in bushmeat are under appreciated in Southern Africa, despite indications that it constitutes a serious conservation threat in parts of the region. Bushmeat trade has emerged as a severe threat to wildlife conservation and the viability of wildlife-based land uses in Zimbabwe during a period of political instability and severe economic decline. We conducted a study around Save´ Valley Conservancy in the South-East Lowveld of Zimbabwe to investigate the dynamics and underlying causes of the bushmeat trade, with the objective of developing solutions. We found that bushmeat hunting is conducted mainly by unemployed young men to generate cash income, used mostly to purchase food. Bushmeat is mainly sold to people with cash incomes in adjacent communal lands and population centres and is popular by virtue of its affordability and availability. Key drivers of the bushmeat trade in the South-East Lowveld include: poverty, unemployment and food shortages, settlement of wildlife areas by impoverished communities that provided open access to wildlife resources, failure to provide stakes for communities in wildlife-based land uses, absence of affordable protein sources other than illegally sourced bushmeat, inadequate investment in anti-poaching in areas remaining under wildlife management, and weak penal systems that do not provide sufficient deterrents to illegal bushmeat hunters. Each of these underlying causes needs to be addressed for the bushmeat trade to be tackled effectively. However, in the absence of political and economic stability, controlling illegal bushmeat hunting will remain extremely difficult and the future of wildlife-based land uses will remain bleak.TRAFFIC East/Southern Africa, the European Union, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Wilderness Trust, Chicago Board of Trade, and the supporters of the African Wildlife Conservation Fund.http://journals.cambridge.orgab201

Airline network-based modelling aspects and methodologies for multidisciplinary optimization

The current airline environment is very competitive and dynamic. Maintaining consistent profitability requires that appropriate tradeoffs be made between the often-competing objectives within planning, marketing and operations. Problems abound in airline scheduling, aircraft routing, market and strategy evaluation, pricing and revenue maximizing, fleet composition and assignment, and network modeling. Airlines have led other industries in the application of operations research and multidisciplinary optimization to deal with these issues. The real-time solution of large-scale optimization models has played a significant role in shaping today’s airline industry. This role will increase as the industry becomes more competitive and flight characteristics change due to the implementation of new technologies. Airline fleet planning and scheduling represents an excellent examples of the application of operations research and mathematical modeling to solve complex and real industry problems. The presentation outlines the most common strategic and tactical airline problems and discusses some of the analytical approaches that can be used to tackle these problems. It explores multiple network-based models, and development of optimization and modeling techniques to support the decision making process for: air travel demand forecast, airline networks development, flexible fleet planning, robust airline operations schedule development, dynamic aircraft assignment and routing planning. A case study using real data for an airline based in Africa is also presentedPapers Presented at the 2018 37th Southern African Transport Conference 9-12 July 2018 Pretoria, South Africa. Theme "Towards a desired transport future: safe, sufficient and affordable"

Why are lions killing us? Human-wildlife conflict and social discontent in Mbire District, northern Zimbabwe

Early in 2010, lions killed four people and over a hundred livestock in Mbire district, northern Zimbabwe, an area bordering a complex of protected wildlife areas of global conservation importance. The events prompted a local outcry, prominent media coverage, and even calls for the translocation of people to safer areas (The Herald 11.1.2010, 23.1.10, 27.3.2010, ZimEye.org 17.1.10, 22.1.10). Government agencies also responded to this apparent human–wildlife conflict. The Mbire Rural District Council (RDC), the local authority in wildlife management, shot ten lions and lifted a moratorium on the hunting of female lions. The central government’s Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks) more than doubled the RDC’s annual lion hunting quota. But unlike these government bodies, local people did not see the attacks only as a human–wildlife conflict. For them, the lion attacks were also meaningful in a different way, signifying a political problem of a much larger magnitude. As local government in Mbire is highly dependent on wildlife exploitation, they did not see the lion attacks independently of the changing governance arrangements in Mbire district

Pilot Study of the Role of Pharmacists in the Use of Veterinary Pharmaceutical Products in Harare and Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe

This study was undertaken to investigate the role played by pharmacists in the use of veterinary pharmaceutical products in Harare and Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. A sample of 32 retail pharmacists participated in the study. Twenty-four pharmacists (75 %) stocked and handled a mean of 2.8 Veterinary Pharmaceutical Products per month and 83 % of them rated their knowledge of use of veterinary pharmaceutical products as being poor or little. 66 % of pharmacists did not feel competent handling veterinary pharmaceutical products. Sixty two percent of pharmacists had prepared veterinary pharmaceutical products before and 38 % had never done this. Pharmacists' competence in handling veterinary pharmaceutical products was associated with stocking veterinary pharmaceutical products (

Information Technology Use in Community Pharmacies in Harare, Zimbabwe

Information technology (IT) has transformed the practice of pharmacy worldwide. This study was undertaken to determine the pharmacists\' IT use, utilization patterns and their opinions regarding IT use. The majority of pharmacies had networked computers (71.7%) and internet connections (60.9%). Pharmacists had poor knowledge of IT (mean rating score = 2.28 ± 0.83) and limited knowledge of the available online resources. The majority of pharmacists used Google for internet literature searches. About 78.1% of pharmacists agreed/strongly agreed that IT had a role to play in pharmacy practice. Internet surfing (89.1%), web browser navigation (67.4%) and advanced e-mail management skills (58.7%) were the most cited pharmacists\' future needs. Harare community pharmacists were found to have poor IT knowledge and generally under utilize IT. More structured informatics training should be given to pharmacists and pharmacy students to better their knowledge and utilization of IT. Keywords: Information technology, pharmacy, Harare, Zimbabwe East and Central African Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Vol. 10 (2) 2007: pp. 45-4

An additional field method to sex adult Barn Swallows during the non-breeding season in Zambia: white spot length in the outer tail feather

Adult Barn Swallows Hirundo rustica exhibit strong sexual size dimorphism in the length of the outermost tail feathers, which are longer in males compared with females. This trait is traditionally used to sex adult Barn Swallows in the field. However, due to the wear and breakage of the tips of the outer tail feather and tail moult during the non-breeding season, sexing becomes unreliable or even impossible. We therefore tested whether the length of the white spot on the outer tail feather is sexually dimorphic, and whether it can be used as an additional sexing method for adult Barn Swallows. The white spot length was sexually dimorphic, based on DNA analysis of 101 adult individuals caught at their roost during the non-breeding season in Zambia. Accuracy in sex determination of 95% could be obtained by classifying individuals with a white spot length 29.5 mm as males. When applying the length of the white spot as an additional method to sex adult Barn Swallows on all birds caught in Zambia during the study period (N = 759), the percentage of birds that could successfully be sexed increased to more than 55%. Therefore we emphasise the importance of measuring the white spot length in addition to the tail fork depth and tail length to sex adult Barn Swallows in the non-breeding season