Early birds

Alarms blared at 4.30am, by which time it is becoming light here. No visible proof of last night's crashing elephant. The sound reverberating in tents makes it feel like mass destruction, when to the elephant it's probably light browsing of favourite leaves.

We drove out at 5am to one of the selected tourism sites in the Conservancy, where only a couple of pilot groups have been taken, and the journey was lovely with sable antelope, buffalo, zebra and bushpig. It would have to be extremely well designed and managed but Niassa holds real potential for high-end tourism with people who have visited the most popular parks in Africa, packed with game, but who are sold on the romance of Niassa's wilderness and remoteness, and who are willing to pay good slabs of money for the experience. The potential camp is situated on an inselberg and is in the early stages of development but holds real potential. Great views of the miombo woodland, a spectacular 500-year old baobab growing (incredibly) out of the rock and possibility for a unique tourist experience as long as the natural features are incorporated into the design and the service is done expertly. One of the previous groups saw a pack of wild dogs on the rocks in the foreground, which would be a real crowd pleaser if it was their territory and happened on a regular basis. One of the team's priorities is making tourism work here, with the numerous challenges such as the logistics of accessing Niassa and cost-effectiveness of bringing good quality supplies to cater to tourists. They wouldn't be happy with the sausages of mechanically deboned chicken, which are part of our standard rations.

It felt like a full day but we were back at Conservancy HQ by 9.30am. We then had hours of heavy discussions over budgets and community development, which made our brains hurt by late afternoon.

Designing logically sound conservation work with communities who are poor, living within a protected area and who are involved in poaching, is very challenging. Conservationists usually work on the basis that if the stresses of living with wildlife are managed (better crop protection), a long-term vision of the value of wildlife instilled (education around the future benefits of keeping animals alive) and opportunities for income generation are provided (through direct employment as scouts or support for developing enterprises), that communities will reduce their involvement in poaching. It's a decent model but omits to include the randomness of human behaviour, treats people as being without their own agency and reduces them to being predictable actors in a logical framework.

For some, yes employment as a game scout and ability to meet nutritional needs could successfully eliminate their desire to hunt bushmeat. For others, increasing material wealth through a successful sesame harvesting business could give them more cash to pay others to poach on their behalf. This is usually one of the trickiest conundrums to think through, because it would be perverse to seek funding for helping create new wildlife-friendly enterprises if the proceeds were used by some community members to exacerbate poaching issues.

Another key aspect is protein, namely meat, which is sorely lacking in remote rural communities where no livestock is kept (and perhaps this is a rule of the protected area). We know that the Niassa communities within Chuilexi seek to meet nutritional needs through poaching, and as they are within the boundaries of a protected area, they receive a very small annual quota allowing them to consume wildlife. This is unlikely to meet their protein requirements, and in such places there is often an inescapable cultural link to consuming wild meat. If some changes to the Reserve regulations happen as expected, we are thinking of factoring this into the design of the programme going ahead, perhaps by working with the community to manage a small area where meat can be harvested in greater quantities. The community would self-police this system and its overall impact on the wider area of Niassa Reserve, wouldn't be significant. Worth thinking through some more, especially if it deters involvement by many in other poaching events.

A male and female lion slinking towards us across the dry Lugenda River re-energised us nicely at sunset and the evening was more chilled. Southern and eastern African conservation is a somewhat incestuous world, with the same characters running into each other across decades in some of the continent's most beautiful places, on consultancies for x or running a training course on y. Often these folk have fascinating stories of what Niassa was like 25 years ago when they last visited. Often they're British-Kenyans reminiscing about the time they got smashed on safari in Lake Turkana, followed by the time they were wasted in Tsavo National Park, followed by... It's less interesting to be trapped down the end of the table with these latter stories, especially when the whiskeys make the tales less coherent.