By News24.com

The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management (Zimparks) and African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), based in Kenya, are at an advanced stage of aggregating and analysing data from a hippopotamus census conducted on the Zambezi River last year.

The census was done in winter because that’s when the Zambezi River is clear, with good visibility for hippos.

The spokesperson for Zimparks, Tinashe Farawo, told News24 the census was carried out over a stretch of 324km of the 2 700km Zambezi River.

“The census was on the Zimbabwe-Zambia part of the Zambezi River. It’s about 324km,” he said.

He said the results would speak to policy-making at a time when climate change was affecting the third-largest living land mammal (after elephants and white rhinos).

He said:

With the numbers believed to be decreasing outside of the Zambezi water body, hippos can be classified as “vulnerable” in Zimbabwe.

Last week, a family had to bury only the lower torso of a hippo attack victim, Crisswell Paratema, 33.

His upper torso and head were not found after the attack, which occurred when he was one of three men fishing in a prohibited area of the Nyaodza River in Kariba.

“One of our biggest challenges is the human to wildlife conflicts. In as much as we want to conserve the wild, we also want to have a situation where people are safe,” he said.

The last hippo census in Zimbabwe were in 1996, 1998 and 2002.

It covered the Zambezi River, below the Kariba Dam Wall to the Mozambique border at Kanyemba, opposite the Luangwa/Zambezi River confluence.

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The 1996 census was carried out using a fixed wing aircraft, while the 1998 and 2002 surveys were made using a helicopter.

It covered 259km, which is a smaller stretch compared to the 2022 census.

While results from last year’s survey had not been made public, the previous three showed an average of 6 130 hippo from a range between 5 763-6 320, in 818 groups, from a range of between 718-927.

The density of hippos along the river was 24.74 hippos per km in 1996, 26.61 hippos per km in 1998, and 26.6 hippos per km in 2002.

The average group size was 3.05, 3.42 and 3.98 – for 1996, 1998 and 2002.

Overall hippo density in 2002 was 24.4, according to results analysed by Dr Norman Monks, a Zimbabwean conservation researcher.