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It is no accident that one of the two men who accompanied the dentist on the safari, and who have now been arrested, was a farmer (the other was a professional hunter hired by Palmer as a guide). State wildlife officials claim that Honest Trymore Ndlovu helped lured the lion off the wildlife reserve and onto his property, Antoinette Farm, where the beast was killed.Why would he do such a thing? Perhaps because he is a farmer in a country where agriculture is an industry of destitution. Zimbabwe was once celebrated as the “Breadbasket of Africa,” whose fertile earth supplied the world with abundant tobacco, corn, and wheat. Today, 76 percent of its rural population lives in abject poverty, dependent on foreign food aid and desperate measures—such as the poaching of the wildlife that inhabits its otherwise barren lands, or rendering assistance to those want to hunt or poach.In 2000, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe enacted a disastrous land reform policy. Farms were divided up and nationalized and many plots were handed out to generals and ministers. Thousands of white land owners were violently evicted from their farms, which were then parceled into smallholdings and given to black Zimbabweans. The destruction of property rights led to a disintegrating economy and widespread poverty. Poaching—to feed the insatiable demand for rhino horn and ivory in China and other parts of Asia—became rife and much of the wildlife in Zimbabwe was simply wiped out.Until 2000 Zimbabwe had a successful wildlife management program, with many big game animals flourishing. But by 2003, a staggering 80 percent of the animals that had lived on Zimbabwean safari camps (which employed firm quotas to regulate animal population sizes) had died. By 2007, there were only 14 private game farms in the country, compared to 620 prior to the land seizures of 2000, according to a National Geographic report. With the protection of private game reserves nearly nonexistent, once-abundant wildlife began dying off, hunted by desperate farmers with no other options for sustenance.

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