What the 2017 documentary “Trophy” tells us about anti-poaching operations in the Kariba REDD+ project

Warning: this article includes disturbing photographs

PHOTO Credit: Woman being interrogated by Green Carbon Africa rangers about her husband’s hunting activities. Screenshot from Trophy.

In July 2023, Die Zeit published an article about the Kariba REDD project in Zimbabwe. “Money doesn’t grow on trees” is the headline. In the article, journalists Tin Fischer and Farai Shawn Matiashe write about anti-poaching operations associated with the Kariba REDD project.

A 2012 report produced by South Pole for the Kariba project states that, “Reducing poaching is part of the core project activities.”

Fischer and Matiashe write that,

If you comb through South Pole’s annual reports, you’ll discover an activity in which a conspicuous amount of resources have gone into: The project has reported hundreds of arrested poachers as a success over the years. Poaching is a widespread problem in Africa: animals are hunted illegally and sold for a lot of money. According to one report, a paramilitary unit was founded for the project, today at least 47 rangers who are employed by another Wentzel company called African Conservancies. That is more than twice as many employees as the offsetting project recently reported for regular employees.

Fischer and Matiashe write that the report reveals that the rangers are taking action both against commercial poachers killing endangered species such as elephants, and against local people who hunt animals that are not endangered for their own consumption.

“Poaching of other animals such as Impala is typically done by locals for subsistence,” the report states. “Poaching is illegal in the project area, and would also be illegal without the project.”

“Poaching has been a serious problem”

Charles Ndondo is the Managing Partner of Carbon Green Africa, the company that runs the Kariba REDD project. In July 2023, a few days before the article came out in Die Zeit, Ndondo wrote a review of the Kariba REDD project.

Ndondo confirms that the project targets both commercial and subsistence hunters:

Poaching has been a serious problem in the project area and Southern Africa as a whole. Poaching is driven by community members for their subsistence, combined with high commercial poaching also present in the area and neighbouring national parks. Thousands of snares have been picked up over the years and 1 snare line can have 40-60 snares. This leads to several animals trapped and being strangled to death in trying to release themselves, of which these poachers do not even recover all the animals caught in the snares. Being directly on the ground would enable sceptics to understand some of these issues. We cannot only focus on the direct project activities; we try to support other activities such as anti-poaching. It might sound romantic to let individual community members poach for meat consumption. However, once you have seen a carcass of a poached animal, or the remains of an impala hung up in a wire snare and forgotten about, you might reconsider such romanticism.

And Ndondo includes some photographs of animals killed by snares to emphasise his point:

Ndondo adds that,

One should also be made very aware, many poachers are armed with heavy calibre weapons, they shoot at rangers many unarmed, law enforcement or anyone to try and avoid arrest. Scouts could die carrying out their duties, poachers could die carrying out illegal activities.

In February 2023, The Herald reported that 30 poachers had been arrested and 15 guns recovered. Charles Khumalo, a ranger with Carbon Green Africa said,

“We have been undertaking combat operations, attending to problem animals in the community, looking out for snares and apprehending poachers.

“In 2022 we managed to arrest at least 30 poachers and recovered 15 firearms. Some of those arrested were convicted while others were cautioned and released. Since 2016 we have not lost an elephant in this area.”

Trophy

In their article in Die Zeit, Fischer and Matiashe write about a documentary film called “Trophy”. The film, directed by Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau, looks at trophy hunting and wildlife conservation in Africa.

One of the founders of the Kariba REDD project, Chris Moore, appears in the film. Moore is “celebrated as a hero who fights against poachers,” Fischer and Matiashe note.

Moore first appears in the documentary in a village where a lion has killed five goats. Only one baby goat survived. A villager asks Moore and another ranger whether they will kill the lion or not. “You need to have a plan on how to handle this,” she says.

“There are other stakeholders involved,” the ranger replies. “People organising photographic safaris and they don’t want the lion to be killed.”

Another villager says that after the lion killed their cows, they brought the last cow into their house. “We called you, but you were not there when it happened,” he says. He is worried that if the lion smells the cow in the house, it will come into the house.

“These are recurring problems,” Moore agrees. “We can’t carry on like this. Somebody’s going to get eaten. It’s just a matter of time. Maybe it’s better people cry about a dead lion and we don’t cry about a dead person. Better that way.”

PHOTO Credit: Chris Moore, co-founder of Kariba REDD project, hunter, and anti-poacher. Screenshot from Trophy.

Away from the villagers, Moore says to the camera,

“We go to extreme lengths to keep animals from being shot on the problem animal control programme. Probably 95% of the time, we can get the animals out of the communities and get them back into where they belong and try and keep the two separate, ’cause they don’t mix well.

“And people are killed every year by elephant and hippo and crocodile and lion. That’s part of life. Part of life here, anyway, certainly.

“Lions come in and absolutely destroy a guy’s livelihood and he doesn’t have a way to sustain his future. Maybe does he end up in the bush, putting up wire snares and poaching?

“At the end of the day, you know, we’re fighting a poaching war.”

Carbon Green Africa’s Khumalo adds,

“We are trying to recruit people. We do the anti-poaching campaigns, trying to teach people and explain to them the importance of animals. The problem is, people, they are suffering. So they are forced now to get into the poach to make a living.”

“You can die for nothing if you’re lying”

The documentary shows Moore and the rangers in action. It’s dark. We see a gun and hammering on a door. The rangers break the door down.

“Go outside! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!” the rangers shout, pointing their guns at the people they’ve just woken up in the house.

We see a woman on the floor. “Sister, the black boots are coming today,” a ranger says. “And they are tough. They are tough. And they are serious.”

They interrogate the woman about her husband’s hunting. She claims that she knows nothing about the hunting. The rangers find a gun in the house.

PHOTO Credit: Moore and other rangers interrogate a woman. Screenshot from Trophy.

The rangers drag a stick across the woman’s back. “Don’t beat me. Don’t beat me,” she says.

“You can die for nothing if you’re lying,” a ranger says.

Then we see Moore smoking and explaining to the camera that,

“The husband had been going into the bush and shooting elephants. That network over the years, probably over the last ten years, would have accounted for a couple of thousand elephant at least. So, yeah, a bad guy. Done a lot of bad things.”

Moore laughs. His voice continues but we’re back at the interrogation. “Tell this fucking lady now we are now tired of this, yeah, and we are going to leave her with boots. We kill! Do you understand?”

Some boys are ordered to sit down. We see Moore lighting up a cigarette in front of them. Then he says to another ranger,

“I’m tired of this nonsense. They are not dangerous kids. On this system of poaching, these young boys will grow up to be in the same system. Maybe these boys will end up carrying ivory in the bush and we will kill them. Better that these kids hear the straight story.”

He talks to the boys. “Come here,” he says.

“We’ve known your father a long time. The future in the bush ain’t a future. There’s no future there. Otherwise you can die, leaving your family behind. Or to be jailed. And you’re young guys with plenty of future to your side. I know if we stay like this, we will end up in the bush. We will end up meeting in the bush.

“And that’s not good. That’s not going forward.”

“It’s a war to save elephants from extinction”

Following the night raid, we see Moore again speaking to the camera:

“We’re fighting this war for the community. This community and another community further away want these elephant’s teeth. They’re worth a lot of money and they will go to all lengths to get what they want.

“So, yeah, we need to look in the mirror every morning. I make a point of it. Every single morning I look in the mirror.

“Because we’ve gotta make sure that we don’t cross the bounds, that we can't lose our humanity for humanity. I think that’s really important.

“It gets harsh and we do things sometimes that, you saw it, scare people. But we have to do what we’ve gotta, we have to keep this fight going.

“It’s a war to save elephants from extinction.”

Later on in the documentary we see Moore again. It’s dark and he’s driving. “We believe that the poachers would have shot an elephant today,” he says. “We hope to meet them on the road and explain to them that this no longer happens in this area.”

He laughs. The rangers get out of the pick-up truck with their guns.

The documentary doesn’t show what happened next. Instead Moore speaks to the camera again:

“There was a sting operation in the district south of us where a lot of our armed poachers come from. And what had transpired was a guy whipped out a knife, tried to stab the police officer. He was shot. He died shortly after that.

“Yeah, don’t know. It was a bit strange ’cause the next day I had to go and shoot an elephant on behalf of the council.

“But walking up to that elephant, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do, and you have this huge adrenaline rush as you’re walking up to it. Your heart’s going. Your head’s going.

“You need to cleanly shoot this animal, and as it folds, it falls to the floor after your shot, there’s just this huge drop of emotion, for me, anyway.

“And it’s, to me, really sad. It turns from this beautiful animal into this floppy mess of grey skin. To me, shooting elephant’s hard. I understand it’s gotta be done and I have to do it sometimes, but it’s a tough call.”

“Yeah, it’s an emotional thing, killing an animal, and I think maybe that’s a part of the hunting, where people have this huge build-up and then this emotional switch. I get that, so I understand maybe if others get it, and maybe it becomes a passionate addiction. I don’t know.”

Foreign hunters

Later, the documentary team visit Ume Camp in the Zambezi Valley. Moore says,

“What we do is run the camp and kind of manage the ongoing management of the anti-poaching in the area, and we get a daily rate when foreign hunters come in to hunt here which really subsidises the money that I have to run my anti-poaching.”

We see Moore and two other people cleaning their guns. “You can imagine all that dust and dirt and rain,” Moore says, “our firearms take a bit of a hammering. That’s why we like these AK actions. Good old AK. Built in Israel. You can’t really go wrong with it.”

Moore laughs as if he’s just told a good joke.

PHOTO Credit: Moore and Philip Glass in Ume Camp. Screenshot from Trophy.

“We’re fighting to save this for the community,” he says, “while people kill it.” He laughs again.

“It really is pretty weird. We're fighting to save something so somebody else can kill it. It just comes back to control, ethic, morals, sustainability.

“You can assimilate the two, the poachers and the commercial hunters, but the difference is, the poachers, they shoot anything for their teeth, literally anything. And they will shoot every last one that there is because there’s a commercial-driven desire for these teeth.

“On the hunting side, if done correctly, where there's a very carefully measured off-take, I can live with that. Killing every last animal, no, can’t live with that, won’t do that. That’s just wrong.”

The film follows Philip Glass, one of the guests at Ume Camp, and we see him shoot a hippopotamus that was wallowing in the river. They drag the hippo away. It’s one of several animals used as bait for Glass’s hunt.

Glass is a Christian. He tells us that,

“When I put my hand on that lion, I can promise you, at that moment, as with all of my life, anybody that believes in evolution is a complete fool. I just don’t understand how people can’t understand that God raised that animal into existence.”

Glass eventually manages to shoot a lion. He bursts into tears. He’s smiling, of course, when he poses for the obligatory photograph behind the lion.