ZimParks Opens Its Parks To Local Tourists

Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) has opened a number of its parks to local tourists following the government’s decision to open the tourism industry for local tourists, the Chronicle reports.

Speaking to the publication ZimParks spokesperson Tinashe Farawo said the lockdown has almost crippled them as they rely heavily on tourists to fund their conservation activities:

Last week Government gave us the greenlight to open our national parks to visitors, so we have made a decision to open most of the parks.

We rely mostly on tourism to fund our conservation activities and this includes law enforcement as well as reacting to human/wildlife conflict incidents.

Over the past three months, we have been facing serious challenges in terms of responding within reasonable time, to human/wildlife conflict incidents because we were not generating income.

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Farawo also said ZimParks was putting safety measures in place to ensure that their parks will not be COVID-19 hotspots:

We are putting mechanisms in place to ensure that our people will be safe, we don’t want to be a source of Covid-19. All our staff are undergoing the mandatory Covid-19 test so that they are ready to receive visitors.

We are busy regularly sanitising areas, which visitors patronise, we will also be doing the basic screening checks for our visitors.We want to assure visitors that as ZimParks, we are doing all reasonably possible to guarantee their safety and thus urge them to visit our parks.

The government opened up the tourism sector to locals last week but did not lift the ban on intercity travel.

More: Chronicle