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No kidding. I remember seeing one of these eagles near West Nicholson. The PH at the time mentioned its nest would probably be raided within the year by poachers.

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Land Reform Threatens Wildlife in Beitbridge
The Daily News (Harare)

August 29, 2003

Oscar Nkala

Villager, Sebastian Malungwana, 77, says for more than 20 years now, he has not seen the battle eagle, a vicious mid-air fighter bird that only a few decades ago was a common sight in Zimbabwe's serene skies.

"The battle eagle does not exist any more in this area. If you see it, which is only on the rarest of occasions, it will be on its migratory trail into or out of Botswana or South Africa," Malungwana said.

"The eagle left because its habitat has disappeared, its prey died while hunters and traditional healers tracked down the eagle.

"Our children will never know the battle eagle," a visibly dejected Malungwana lamented.

With the air of a veteran conservationist, Malungwana, explained to the Daily News crew how less than 50 years ago, the powerful flutter of the wings of the battle eagle and its piercing cries were a common experience in the Gwanda South and Beitbridge areas.

But the fighter image of the eagle was to be its demise as traditional healers here hunted down the bird to use it to make magical charms, explained Malungwana.

And as the local population expanded, encroaching onto previously uninhabited forest areas, which is where the battle eagle had made its home, the bird was forced to seek refuge in less crowded commercial farm areas.

But now with the government's fast-track land reform, that has seen villagers moving onto the commercial farms, the battle eagle has been virtually driven out of its home in Gwanda South and Beitbridge areas.

Malungwana said, "The last habitats for the big, predatory birds was on the farms. But when poachers are brought closer to them by the fast track-resettlement programme, the birds have no choice but to search for virgin habitat, which I believe no longer exists in this country except in the national parks and sanctuaries."

Reflecting the concerns of many villagers here in Gwanda and Beitbridge, Malungwana explained how the little wildlife still roaming the newly resettled areas faced extinction because of a combination of natural and man-made disasters.

He said: "Birds are blessed because they can fly away. Chances are high that any animal that tries to leave the newly occupied farms will walk into a snare, a party of dog-hunting or gun-totting poachers or wander into the dry wilderness to die of thirst like all our cattle."

Environmentalists and other animal lovers here had hoped the three-nation Trans-Limpopo Frontier National Park, combining three national parks in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa into a giant wildlife sanctuary would be home to animals made homeless by natural calamities and man-made disasters.

But the slow pace in the development of the park that brings together Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou, South Africa and Mozambique's Kruger and Gaza national parks respectively has left desperate environmentalists here searching for quick-fix solutions.

Don Davidson, of the Beitbridge chapter of the Zimbabwe Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said he was now working with other animal lovers from South Africa to establish a 300-hectare bird and game sanctuary that will encompass the sections of the Limpopo which have now become a temporary habitat for wildlife.

She said: "The aim is to establish a safe habitat for the birds and animals whose numbers are dwindling at an amazing rate around here.

"Beitbridge is blessed with some of the rarest animals and birds which are threatened with extinction due to widespread poaching by trophy hunters and those who kill for consumption.

"Some birds, like the blue heron which thrives only in swampy areas, are also dying due to drying up of habitat as the drought lays the wetlands to waste."

Davidson said some of animal species that were likely to be found in the proposed new game sanctuary included the wild dog, civet cat, leopard, cheetah and lion.

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