How is man affecting the environment around Victoria Falls?

by Dawn Brown
(Hertfordshire, UK)

Hi, great website. My son aged 11 is doing a Geography project on Victoria Falls. One of the questions is explain how humans may be affecting the natural wonder & how he can stop tourists damaging the natural wonder. He has thought of natural waste e.g. rubbish etc. Is there anything else that we as humans do either knowingly, or unknowingly that is damaging Victoria Falls and how we can protect it. Big thank you for your help.




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How is man affecting the environment around Victoria Falls?

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Feb 19, 2010
 Mans impact
by: Tony

Hi Dawn

Thanks for your questions. I hope your sons project goes well.

A couple of factors that are of concern affect the surrounding area of Victoria falls.

1) The commercial sightseeing helicopters are buzzing around just about all day long, this some say has had a notable effect on the birdlife in the area. Certainly there have been studies with worrying results of the impact this noise disturbance has on the animal and mainly Elephant population. There was talk of increasing the number of helicopter licenses to cope with the volume of tourists during the football world cup in 2010. This would certainly have a negative impact on the environment.

2) There is a considerable amount of poaching in the area for animals, fish and trees. This has a huge impact on the environment. The animals are being slaughtered for their meat and skins, the fish are netted out of the Zambezi for food and the trees are cut down for firewood and more dangerously for the huge wood carving industry. Anti poaching units are hard at work to control this and you can read more about all of that on our site, there is a button in the left Nav bar called anti poaching.

3)Man's general encroachment by putting more boats on the river and building more lodges along the banks is putting a lot of strain on the wildlife and environment. This is a natural wonder of the world and people are going to over populate the surrounding area and spoil it.

4)The actual Victoria Falls themselves are pretty pristine and are within a National park on the Zimbabwe side so are well monitored and protected. Tourists have to stay on paths within the rainforest, so there is not much impact there, even the wildlife is pretty much used to humans now.
On the Zambian side of the falls many of the locals come down to the river and wash their clothes etc and leave rubbish around.

At one stage they wanted to floodlight the falls so that tourists could go down at night, but this is strictly against the rules as a World Heritage site and they threatened to withdraw the world heritage status so fortunately that plan was abandoned.

These are just a few points that come to mind, I hope that helps. Maybe someone else has some things extra to add.
Jun 19, 2010
 VIC FALLS
by: matsobane Gololo

Hi Dawn,

1)there are around 150000 fisherman in vic falls with a possible damage to the eco sytem.
2) another problem is human waste.fisherman are leaving about 100 tonnes of human waste around the vic falls
3)pollution of water sources with algae and point 2 above.


those are few coming up.hope it will help
Aug 17, 2010
 victoria falls
by: Anonymous

thats sad what is happening to victoira falls. i cant belivie people can be like that. I want to help so much. i came to this website for reshearch and i found some nice infomation. i hope the awesome water fall gets help!!!
May 07, 2011
 VICTORIA FALLS
by: Anonymous

all i hear is that victoria falls is the most magnifecent place in the world and i know there pollution and everything else so why don't some people who got layed off or something go over there and help protect the natural wonder.



HOPE YOU LIKE IT
May 07, 2011
 plan to save
by: Anonymous

EVERYONE LETS RAISE MONEY AND GIVE IT TO THEM SO THAT THEY CAN GET SERCURITY AND HAVE IT PROTECTED FROM PROACHERS




HOPE EVRYONE DOES SOMETHING TO HELP
May 08, 2011
 VICTORIA FALLS
by: Anonymous

lets do something about it come on lets raise money and get better police over there yayayayayayay (:





hope we can save it
Aug 10, 2011
 CLEAN
by: kate

i am doing a Geography course on Victoria Falls as well 900 words HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BUt keep Victoria falls clean!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
help rise money!!!!!!!!!!!!:):):):):):):):):):)

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