Far too many international wildlife self-proclaimed experts, especially those living in Europe and North America, tend to see Africa and especially its national parks and game reserves as a sort of outdoor zoo.
The exotic wildlife, at least exotic to them, roam in large numbers in front of tourists with cameras and any local people are either there to provide services, such as decent beds and good food to the tourists, or are cute Africans living in cute huts and forming part of the "natural" experience.
What is not seen is the complex ecologies that have to be maintained, the need for people living with wildlife or near wildlife to earn a reasonable living and have a decent life, with the children going to school and university, and a degree of safety for these human communities.
The continent cannot be emptied of people to make the outdoor zoo, and even the game areas, as large as they are, will still have people as neighbours.
A major modern trend in Southern Africa in recent years, driven by research in the region by African ecologists and other scientists, has been to create huge transnational zones that allow free movement of wildlife across borders and create the necessary very large areas that are required to get a sustainable natural environment.
A patchwork collection of smaller parks is simply bad science. The animal populations are isolated, inbreeding can become rife, populations are split genetically, and sooner or later the collapses come. This is the zoo approach.
Zimbabwe set aside very large blocks of land for wildlife, much of this dating admittedly from colonial times, but the land set aside was largely that which was not suitable for extensive agriculture, so reducing potential human-wildlife conflict and reducing the risk of large-scale population movements into the wildlife areas as farmland became more crowded.
Zimbabwe now participates in four of these huge zones. The large blocks of wildlife land in the northwest have been combined with similar stretches in Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Angola to form the Kavango Zambezi Trans-Frontier Conservation Area, which also includes Lake Kariba.
The Gonarezhou National Park and surrounding areas have been placed within wildlife areas in Mozambique and South Africa to form the Great Limpopo Trans-Frontier Conservation Area.
The Mana Pools and neighbouring safari areas are now combined with similar zones across the Zambezi River in Zambia to form the Lower Zambezi Mana Pools Trans-Frontier Conservation Area.
Now the lands to that area's east have been dedicated with more Zambian territory and Mozambican land into the new Zimoza, Zimbabwe Mozambique Zambia Transfrontier Conservation Area in an agreement signed on Friday last week.
Like the other three huge areas the new conservation area includes people, around 600 000 in the three countries, who are part of Zimoza and who have the opportunity of making a decent living within Zimoza in return for careful planning of those livings.
At the ceremony creating Zimoza, something done on the recommendations and based on the research of scientists and wildlife experts of the three countries, President Mnangagwa brought up the problem of the First World amateur experts who will see this as a large outdoor zoo, not as a rich and varied ecology.
Wildlife are photographic models in this restricted view and that has led to a lot of dangers.
For a start, the highly successful conservation programmes in Southern Africa have preserved the herd of African bus elephant in the region, and these herds are growing and are starting to eat themselves out of house and home, and destroying the natural ecology.
Their only natural predator is man, and they have evolved with humans, and all humans are indigenous to Africa, with that relationship.
Southern African wildlife experts and scientists want managed hunting to replace what was the case for hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps millions of years, and have warned that without hunting or culling the environment will be destroyed, converted into a treeless desert.
The fact that managed hunting will also bring money into the local communities who live with wildlife is a major bonus, but not the prime reason for allowing some hunting. The overriding reason is environmental.
Southern Africans have proposed workable arrangements to allow legal ivory trade, to bring in the money that communities need and wildlife operations could benefit from, using genetic marking and working with Governments in those countries, mostly in Asia, where most buyers are found to police the whole value chain.
One obvious move would be to have all the necessary carving and processing done in Southern Africa, so no raw ivory that can be mixed with poached products is exported, and this would also create more African skilled jobs.
President Mnangagwa also publicly wondered about the value of some of the First World advice, coming from countries that have largely wiped out large blocks of their wildlife.
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Even if we ignore the mega fauna extinctions of European and American hunter gatherers, and these are now documented, there are the more modern extinctions.
Where are the wild aurochs of Eurasia, the progenitor of modern cattle. They are all gone, for ever. Where are the wild horses, the progenitor of the domestic horse: all gone.
Even the European and American bison were only just saved, and herds are tiny. Britain deliberately exterminated all its wolves during the 18th century to avoid human-wildlife conflict, and perhaps the reintroduction of a few hundred would bring home to the people there the potential for human-wildlife conflict that Africans live with.
So the advice given is likely to be dubious and never based on experience, just on the dichotomy between animals in zoos or their equivalent and people living their lives apart of wildlife.
Southern Africa is moving ahead fast with these giant trans-frontier conservation areas that are built on a real understanding of wildlife, the environment and the benefits of moving out of the zoo mentality, but does not need that mentality trying to control our successes and separate human beings from the environment.
