The sun was high and hot over Mabale when Chief Dingane Nelukoba came out to welcome me. He was barefooted. Dust on his feet. Behind his homestead the mopane and acacia thinned out and became Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.
He searched my face for familiarity. His eyes moved over me as though trying to remember where he had seen me before. He looked past me rather than towards me.
He pointed 500m to a patch of bare ground. "The goats were left unattended there. Lions ate them. Three weeks ago, a bull elephant trampled a man near the Mabale business centre."
Then he addressed me. Not with a greeting but a question.
"I had been told you were coming. Some of your colleagues came before and asked me questions. But years have passed and we are still living with the same problems. What is the point of talking to you if nothing changes and we do not get help?"
His words hung in the air with the smell of crushed goats.
Since 2019, Zimbabwe has recorded 370 human deaths, 453 injuries and 10 368 reported cases of human-wildlife conflict.
Nowhere is the pressure worse than Hwange. As boreholes and waterholes dry up, elephants, lions and people are forced into the same narrow corridors to survive.
ZimParks lists Hwange as a hotspot but it does not publish exact death figures or the dollar cost of destroyed crops for the district. The gap is not just data. It is money.
Trevor Lane, a conservationist who tracked elephants and worked with communities in Hwange for more than 25 years, is blunt: ZimParks is being asked to fund everything — road construction, bridges, equipment, rangers, infrastructure.
"You cannot expect one authority, with one budget line, to do all of that and still respond to a crisis every night," he said.
When money dries up, patrols stop, poaching spikes and communities wait years for compensation.
That is where community comes in. And in Mabale, Belinda Ncube's women-only ranger group have taken up the challenge. Ncube leads Vusile-Speakout, formed to protect people and wildlife. They don't carry guns. They carry phones, radios and solar torches.
Using a cellphone toll-free line, Ncube's team tracks fresh spoor and sends voice notes to the ward in minutes.
If elephants are moving towards fields, the village knows before sunrise. If they spot snares or suspected poachers, they alert ZimParks and the Painted Dog Conservation (PDC).
"We are the first eyes," Ncube said. "If we don't warn, who will?"
Someone is always at the desk, turning calls into action. When a report comes in — poachers in the bush, elephants in a maize field or a child bitten by a snake — PDC staff triage it on the spot. If it's poaching, the call goes to ZimParks or police. If it's a conflict, it's relayed to rangers nearby to intercept and apprehend the culprits or drive animals back into the park.
The demand is constant. "On average, we record 30 critical calls per month and most of these calls are responded to," says David Kuwawoga, the PDC operations manager. For him, the line has grown beyond anti-poaching.
"It's a lifeline," he says. "Villagers now use it to call for emergency services too. When someone is hurt at night or there's danger, this is the number they dial. And PDC makes sure it gets to the right people, fast."
Nelinkosi Tshuma, a villager, calls it the village crier— umsizi wezindaba womphakathi.
"In African villages we had the messenger who would run from household to household with important news," Tshuma says. "Today this number does that work. Le namba iyi-umsizi wezindaba [This number is the community messenger]. One call comes in and within minutes the message is moving — to neighbours, to scouts, to ZimParks, to police."
A warning about lions near a school. A report of snares. A plea for help after a flood.
"People trust it because it answers," Tshuma says. "They know if they call, someone will pass the message on."
In wards where clinics are far and police posts are hours away, the number has become the thread tying the village to help. The remote villages have been connected giving people direct access to help without money and transport on the way.
ZimParks, the PDC and the International Fund for Animal Welfare are backing the work with more real-time tracking. Phones and EarthRanger tools let rangers see animal movements on a map and send alerts before a herd reaches a village. PDC officials say reports have gone up because reporting is free. That means more data, faster response and fewer animals killed.
ZimParks says the partnership is working. In 2024/2025 rapid response teams reached more than 99% of reported cases. Reporting is faster now because communities have phones and WhatsApp.
The old way was reactive. Wait for a call. Send a ranger. File a report.
"The new way in Mabale is preventive and data-driven," says Luckmore Safuli, the ZimParks spokesperson.
The tools also reduce claims at ZimParks' Wildlife Compensation Unit, which was set up to pay people like Nelukoba when wildlife destroys crops, kills livestock or causes injury and funeral expenses.
For Senator and conservationist Jerry Gotora, this is a leap. New technology is pushing ZimParks forward in conservation and pulling communities closer. But that only works if the benefits are real. Campfire revenue must go to community development — repairing schools, clinics and drilling boreholes. When people see money from wildlife in their village, they are more willing to live with it.
Kuwawoga is optimistic: "The tech is here. If we don't fund the human part, wildlife will pay the price."
By "human part" he means two things: a ring-fenced compensation fund and fuel for rangers to respond.
For 30 years, Mabale and Dete were told the deal. Campfire: Communities protect wildlife and wildlife pays the community. But with rising numbers of human-wildlife cases, there are fears that conservation work will be compromised.
"Campfire is the best model to allay the villagers' fears and hopelessness," Gotora says. "That is, if the money keeps flowing into Campfire projects."
In 2023, Nelukoba led a delegation to the environment minister in Harare. Their message was blunt: "With the Rural District Council and ZimParks dipping in, the circle keeps breaking," he says.
When the circle breaks, trust breaks. When trust breaks, people go back to snares.
The problem is not unique to Zimbabwe. But it has been answered differently in other Southern African countries. In Namibia, 86 community conservancies earned N$160 million in 2022. The money goes into conservancy bank accounts. Villagers vote on clinics, boreholes or cash. Poaching dropped because communities report it.
In Kenya, Maasai landowners lease land to tourism lodges. Each family can earn $500 (R8 100) to $2000 a year just for keeping land open for elephants. The money bypasses the county government.
In Mabale, the money goes through many hands and ends up funding community projects like clinics, roads and classroom blocks with little community decision making, hence compensation issues rage on.
As climate change pushes ten elephants out of Hwange in search of water, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique are watching Mabale. A system that runs on free texts and GPS could work anywhere budgets are small but conflict is big.
What happens when donors leave?
"We can only push upwards," Kuwawoga says. "A downward action reverses all that we have accomplished."
For now, the phone keeps ringing at 2am. In Mabale, someone answers. The ranger comes. The Relief Unit exists. But until the money flows, Nelukoba's question is waiting for an answer: "I have lost cattle, goats and crops. When is help coming? Will they compensate me for all that I have lost?"
This story was produced with support from the Jamma HCC grant.