Removing snares and arresting poachers may protect wildlife in the short term, but conservation organisations need to go further and address the pressures driving people to poach, according to Conservation Wildlife Fund lead Debra Ogilvie-Roodt.
Ogilvie-Roodt says continued snare removal should not be viewed as the ultimate measure of success because the same problem can return if its underlying causes are not addressed.
Her comments come against a backdrop of extensive anti-poaching operations in the Hwange landscape.
Painted Dog Conservation reported conducting more than 2,200 patrols and removing more than 4,700 snares during 2025, while 15 poachers were arrested for multiple offences under the Parks, Wildlife and Forest Act.
The figures demonstrate the scale of resources being devoted to protecting wildlife.
But Ogilvie-Roodt argues that conservation needs to ask a more difficult question: why are people setting the snares in the first place?
She says the continued need to patrol and remove snares should be viewed as an indication of where conservation organisations need to make further gains.
“It means that the approach that we are potentially taking from, you know, going out and patrolling to remove snares, actually the energy there needs to be directed somewhere else in order to stop the snaring from happening,” she said.
For her, that “somewhere else” is greater engagement with communities living around wildlife areas.
“Working with communities, understanding what their needs are, you know, understanding the nuances as well,” she said.
Ogilvie-Roodt argues that simply removing a snare does not necessarily remove the reason it was set.
“Someone who’s snaring a second species, and catching them or removing the snares is not getting rid of the issue,” she said.
The approach, she says, should therefore focus on preventing the problem rather than repeatedly responding after wildlife has already been placed at risk.
“So what can we as a conservation organization do to preempt that issue?” she asked.
Her position is that conservation organisations should seek to understand the pressures affecting communities and find ways of addressing those pressures.
“We don’t want to arrest people. We don’t want people in jail. We want to stop it from happening,” she said.
The argument presents a different measure of conservation success: not simply how many snares have been removed or how many arrests have been made, but whether fewer people are setting snares in the first place.
Communities living alongside wildlife often face costs of their own, including injuries, deaths and losses caused by wildlife, making their relationship with conservation more complex than simply protecting animals from poaching.
For conservation to become meaningful to these communities, Ogilvie-Roodt believes their needs and circumstances have to form part of the solution.
The challenge, therefore, is to combine effective law enforcement and wildlife protection with meaningful community engagement that addresses the pressures contributing to poaching.