In Zambia, raising cattle is a risky business. A whole range of diseases attacks the country’s herds with depressing regularity, killing hundreds, if not thousands of cows with each outbreak. The cost of disease weighs most heavily on the rural poor — a large percentage of rural households depend on cattle to a certain extent, to ensure their livelihoods. Here, as in many parts of Africa, cattle are a traditional store of value, a kind of bank account on hooves.

Cornell University and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) were recently awarded nearly $1.2million from USAID’s Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP).

In the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, an area rich in wildlife diversity, it is estimated that 42% of the food insecure families resort to poaching wild animals so they can barter the meat for produce, according to David Lewis of Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC). To stop this phenomenon, WSC established a program whereby individuals who relinquished their wire snares and illegal guns and would receive supplementalmaize for one-year