WHERE in the world can you come face to face with a full grown rhino and feel completely safe?
The answer is Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe’s top tourist resort, where the animal in question is made of solid wood.
This intricate artwork is one of thousands in varying sizes and shapes on display at various outdoor curio markets in Victoria Falls.
However, environmentalists say the hardwood trees from which these beautiful carvings are crafted are in danger of extinction.
A recent study on Zimbabwe’s wood carving industry by local and international researchers discovered it has become a roaring business in Victoria Falls. Tourists are known to pay as much as US$1 500 for life-sized works and giant busts.
“There is money in selling wood carvings,” confirms Moses Mugande, a sculptor at the bustling Elephant’s Walk Shopping and Artist’s Village curio market. “We can even exchange some of our work for precious goods, or even formal wear suits.”
Even those tourists who do not want to buy the sculptures have a penchant for photographing them. Environmentally, carvers poaching trees are deforesting the woodlands. As more individuals turn to making crafts, the sustain ability of forests deteriorates. Deforestation threatens not only a healthy ecosystem, but a lack of wood also has a direct effect on people.
As Mugande phrased it: “No wood means no work for most ordinary residents in Victoria Falls.” Most of the hardwood used by sculptors in Victoria Falls is obtained legally and illegally from the surrounding rural areas and nearby state land.
On protected state land, the Forestry Commission strictly enforces laws related to the sustainable exploitation of trees. Previously, the Forestry Commission allowed local people to freely harvest dead wood from the forest.
However, due to rampant poaching by wood carvers, people are now rarely allowed to legally extract any kind of wood. Despite these regulations, poaching continues. Sculptor Ndumiso Muleya denies using illegally obtained wood, but says that some of his colleagues have been fined for the offence.
“I get hardwood from the Forestry Commission. They supply hardwood that has died naturally, but it’s not enough to satisfy the demand, as not many trees die naturally in the wild,” he says.
“Wet wood is easier to work on than dry wood and most sculptors are tempted to poach wet wood instead of being content with the small supply of dry wood from the Forestry Commission.”
Although aware that the making of these large sculptures was depleting his country’s hardwood trees, the sculptor says it is the only way he and many other wood workers can support their families.
“Starvation taught me the art of wood carving,” Muleya said.
“We entered this business because there are no jobs. Then frequent droughts brought more hardships, followed by economic challenges which brought more unemployment. Woodcarving is our only source of livelihood.”
The current woodcarving boom may be good news for the tens of thousands of craftsmen dotted in villages, towns, and cities across the country, but not for the rapidly dwindling indigenous hardwood trees.
To combat the loss, environmentalists are calling on the Forestry Commission to introduce an environmental tag for the carvings to show the legality of the wood’s source.
This seal of approval, they argue, would then help authorities to easily track and crack down on poachers. They have also asked the commission to spearhead a campaign to educate sculptors and their clients to trade only in wood marked with the environmental tags.
“The market is there. Tourists will always buy, and now there is a high price paid for wooden sculptures. What would also help is if sculptors could use pine, which is exotic, but grows faster than hardwoods, which take years and years to grow,” says the Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust, a local non-governmental organisation.
The move to life-size and larger sculptures in a trade once typified by smaller mantle-piece objects is believed to be a direct response to market demand. “But this trend is threatening our mahogany, teak and mukwa trees,” adds the Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust.
A further threat to Zimbabwe’s trees is a growing trade in root art. For example, the roots of the Mukuti tree, which can be as long as 68 meters deep, making it the plant with the deepest known roots, are cut, stripped of their bark, then varnished and used as household ornaments.
“I have seen people selling these roots on the roadside. And, of course, when the roots are cut, the trees die,” says Mugande.
“The long-term damages this booming trade is bringing have yet to be documented, and when we see the damage it will be too late,” says Innocent Hodzonge, executive director at Environmental Africa, a Zimbabwe-based non-governmental organisation which runs environmental projects in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. —New Ziana
