On The ‘Dying’ Zambezi

THE Zambezi River is taking heavy strain at the moment with all the netting going on. Over the past few years netting has increased dramatically and is now the worst we have ever seen. They are killing the river and nobody is doing anything about it.

Ninety per cent of the netting done on the river is done by Zambians. They are netting on both sides of the river and it’s being done on a very big scale. Nets on the side of the river are put in for kilometres and no fishing can be done of any sort without catching a net. During the night they are drag netting, bashing and fishing in any illegal way they can.
Nets used are not according to specs and any kind of net is used. Example, mosquito nets, and the worst one of them all, monofilm nets.
We at the lodges practice catch and release but it has come to a stage now that it is difficult to catch any fish. Clients are complaining and are threatening not to come back in the future if nothing is done about this. This will be a big loss for tourism in the Caprivi as this is one of the main attractions in the area and people drive from everywhere across the world to come and tiger fish.
Fisheries, the Police and the Regional Council are all aware of the problem. Nothing is done to enforce the law.
The only law they are enforcing at the moment is to check if our clients have got fishing licences. Which is unfair because they drive right past all the illegal nets and give the clients a fine instead. Not one of the inspectors have any desire to enforce the law when it comes to netting. They just drive right past them without even looking in their direction.
If we don’t take action fast in this regard I only give it another at the most two years and their will be no fish left in the Zambezi.
The only way forward now is to make all this public. If we don’t we are living on a dying river and before long the Lodges will have to retrench workers. Is this what we want? Tourism is one of the main economy drives for the Caprivi, please we don’t want to lose this.

Riaan van Niekerk
Island View Lodge
via e-mail