A hunting concession is two rights stacked on top of each other: the right to be on a defined area of land, and the right to take wildlife on it. They come from different places — the land right from the landholder, the wildlife right from ZPWMA — and a concession is only as strong as the weaker of the two. Understanding tenure is the difference between a lease you can build a business and raise capital against, and a permission that can evaporate at the end of a season.
Land rights vs wildlife rights
The land right is contractual: a lease or concession agreement with whoever controls the land. The wildlife right is regulatory: ZPWMA's annual quota allocation and permits. A long, secure land lease with no quota is worthless for hunting; a generous quota with no secure right to the land is unbankable. A well-structured concession ties the two together and makes the land tenure long enough to outlast the seasonal quota cycle.
Who you contract with
- Private land and conservancies: you contract directly with the owner or the conservancy entity — usually the cleanest tenure, governed by a private lease.
- Communal land: the Rural District Council holds the wildlife-use rights under CAMPFIRE, so the RDC (and the community) are your counterparties, and benefit-sharing is built in.
- State land / Parks estate: ZPWMA itself may grant concessions over land it controls, on terms it sets.
Tenure length and renewal
Hunting is a long-cycle business. Anti-poaching, water development, road maintenance, habitat management and the slow rebuilding of trophy quality all take years to pay back. A one- or two-year lease cannot justify that investment, which is why serious concessions are taken on multi-year terms — commonly ten years or more — with a clearly drafted renewal option tied to performance and continued regulatory approval. The renewal mechanics matter as much as the headline term: an option that is vague, or that the landholder can refuse at will, gives you less security than the number of years suggests.
Why secure tenure is financeable tenure
Investors and lenders price tenure risk directly. A concession with long-dated, well-documented tenure, a clean quota history and defined renewal rights supports a higher valuation and a larger raise than the same wildlife on insecure ground. When tenure is recorded properly — area, term, renewal, rent, quota basis and the conditions on which the grant depends — the concession becomes an asset a term sheet can be written against.
Land tenure in Zimbabwe is fact-specific and depends on the landholder type, the title or use-rights position, and prevailing policy. Verify the tenure and the authority of the party granting it before committing capital, and take qualified Zimbabwean counsel on the definitive lease.
How it connects to your documents
Start a concession with a Concession Lease — Heads of Terms to fix area, tenure, rent, quota basis and community obligations before lawyers draft the definitive lease. Where investment is involved, an Investment Term Sheet records the economics against that tenure, and a Hunting Operator Agreement governs who actually runs the hunts on the ground.