ZAMBIA: Illegal fishermen plunder the zambezi

"THEY are busy killing the river
and nobody is doing anything
about it!" laments Riaan van
Niekerk the owner of Island View
Lodge in the Zambezi Region.
Lodge owners and
environmental conservationists
fear that the Zambezi River's
once bountiful fish stock is on
the decrease.
Island View Lodge, situated on
the upper Zambezi River, has
long been the ideal destination
for tourists who long for a
unique angling experience under
the African sunset.
The lodge is renowned for its
angling adventures with 11
sought-after angling species to
put the anglers' skills to the test.
The lodge boasts a 'true Zambezi
experience' for its visitors, but if
the current overfishing
continues, Van Niekerk fears the
true Zambezi adventure may be
over, along with a number of
jobs in the tourism industry.
"Tourists come and go without
catching anything. This has never
happened in the past. Months
that are supposed to be good for
fishing deliver nothing at all," Van
Niekerk says.
He says fishing in the current
season in the Zambezi River has
been disappointing and tourist
are leaving earlier than planned.
"They say I should call them
when something is done about
the netting," he says, adding that
some of the tourists have said
they are not coming back.
Niekerk says he has witnessed
an influx of fishermen from
nearby communities and from as
far as Zambia, casting their nets
all over the place, across the river
and backwaters on both sides,
on a very large scale.
"Nets on the side of the river are
put in for kilometres and no
fishing can be done without
catching a net. They used to do
this illegal fishing during the
night, but now because there is
no law, they do it in broad
daylight," he said.
"Not only are they killing the fish,
cormorants, otters, crocodiles,
everything in the path of this net
gets killed. Last year, we even
saw them targeting the carmine
bee eaters," he says.
Last week, a few foreign
fishermen were arrested when
found fishing illegally in Lake
Liambezi and conservationists in
the Namibian component of the
Kavango-Zambezi (Kaza) Trans-
Frontier Conservation Area (TFCA)
said they were worried that the
fourth longest river in Africa is
not being given enough time to
recover its fish stock