Crocodile and Hippo Conservation

To mitigate conflict between humans and both crocodiles and hippos in Swaziland

The conservation concern that triggered this project was increasing conflict of crocodiles and hippos with their population expansions due to better protection and also increasing human population development, as well as increasing use of land close to water (sugar cane, recreation).

The objectives of the project are:

• To mitigate conflict between Swaziland's burgeoning human populations and monocultures, and those hippo and crocodile populations that have re-established themselves outside the parks.
• To assist Big Game Parks, as the national wildlife management authority, responding to such problems and having to deal with this human–wildlife conflict through capture, removal and translocation or even lethal control of the situation.
• For these capture and translocation operations, better equipment such as traps, trailers for traps and running costs is required. Cologne Zoo tries to help financially with these improvements.
• To help with installing structures like barriers screens, to allow for the safe fetching of water by villagers in water bodies inhabited by crocodiles.
• In order to improve on habitat quality for the two focus species, permanent water bodies need to be enlarged and maintained through costly repairs initially within game reserves.

WAZA Conservation Project 11014 is implemented by Big Game Parks with support provided by Cologne Zoo.

Visit www.koelnerzoo.de.