MPONGWE, Zambia – The Chimfuneme swamp forest in central Zambia’s Copperbelt province got its name — which means “hiding place” in the local language, Lamba — long ago when strife tore apart rival clans and those living near this impenetrable natural fortress hid inside it to escape invaders. These days, the invaders come armed with chainsaws, not spears, and their target is the forest itself. But the local community has a new defense: honorary forest rangers armed with smartphones. “If they [illegal loggers] are here with a truck, we take the number plate, even capture a picture of their truck, which we send to the office,” says one of the rangers, 21-year-old Rhodah Kabunda. “They will not go anywhere, they [Forestry Department officials] will catch them.” WeForest extension officer Jackson Mkandawire shows honorary forest rangers a map on his phone that delineates boundaries around the Imanda forest, within which no commercial timber harvesting is permitted. Image by Ryan Truscott for Mongabay. Recently, she and her fellow rangers, whose full title is honorary community forest rangers confronted a group trying to cut and remove logs in one of the mushitus, as the swamp forests are known locally. They forwarded pictures of the loggers’ vehicle plate number to the local office of the Forestry Department in Mpongwe, 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) away. The vehicle was impounded and the case is now before the courts. “Right now I think it [the truck] is at the police station,” Kabunda says. Under Zambian law, vehicles…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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