Whilst out on a morning game drive we found fresh human footprints crossing a road. With one of the seven sets of tracks barefooted and another showing home made sandals it was clearly not tourists from one of the bush camps out on an early morning walk, but Poachers.
Sure enough when we got off our vehicle and walked a hundred metres or so into the bush, following the tracks, we found a very recently abandoned poacher's camp - fire still hot and smoking where they had processed the meat from the Buffalo they had killed.
The picture here shows the fire used to smoke the meat which will be sold to truckers on the main road outside the Park, or taken to towns and cities like Lusaka where the middle classes have an expensive taste for bush-meat.
This was not a case of subsistence poaching (taking animals for the pot) which I can understand, but commercially driven killing of wildlife for profit.
Sam, our expert guide from Nkonzi Bush Camp, called the find in immediately via radio to the national park authorities who sent three teams of park rangers out to intercept the poachers who, we believe, would have heard our vehicle approach as they set off South with their haul of illegal bush-meat. They also put up a plane to try and track the poachers down.
Make no bones about it - the fight against poaching is a serious one and the anti poaching patrols are up against well organised (and armed) gangs. You can find out more about some of the heroic people fighting this scrurge here at the Conservation South Luangwa CSL web site (you can also donate to keep the anti poaching aircraft flying!)
Our own little group then made our way back to our vehicle to carry on with our game drive - feeling more than a little pleased that our information would have given the anti-poaching patrols a bit of a head start.
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