CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources) works by giving the local community the control, protection and benefits of wildlife. The goal of the organization was to enable wildlife to contribute to the well being and incentivize local people to make management decisions. Any wildlife ownership scheme has benefits and drawbacks. While in developed countries, public ownership models appear to work effectively, it is not always receptive to developing countries. I believe that CAMPFIRE is an essential program to the communities in Zimbabwe but has severe room for improvement in order to make the economic impact that it promised. As for the issues revolving around the decrease in black rhino’s in Zimbabwe, I believe that a CAMPFIRE type approach could have beneficial results for the rhinos, if one, the incentives were more evident to the locals, and B, if the policies within the program specifically focused on wildlife conservation, without being to vague. 

Although the program had some improvements needed, it does however have some redeeming qualities. For example, “from 1989 to 1993 income from wildlife constituted up to 24% of local revenue, and in several districts it exceeded all other individual sources, including government grants” (Frost & Bond, 2008). The CAMPFIRE project was the first community-based wildlife conservation project to tackle wildlife as a sustainable, productive resource and it acts as a model for other indigenous conservation projects in Africa. 

As for some of the flaws within the system, one stated in this article is that under the CAMPFIRE program, some assumptions made is that the revenue from the use of wildlife can produce adequate incentives for individual households and communities within them to adjust or restrict their land use in constructive ways. It largely depends on how the rewards are calculated. At the ward or district level, the aggregate amounts can be high, where as, at the level of the household, the contributions are generally small and inconsistent, if at all. There is also the subject of cost that must be considered with this specific program. Communities must carry the burden to wildlife in regard to losing crops and livestock, and dealing with perceived and real risks to their lives.

Although CAMPFIRE may have endured challenges throughout its placement, it does however, prove its ability to enable communities to not only benefit from, but manage the wildlife around them. This was one reason motivating Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE initiative, which gives local communities power over wildlife to reap the benefits of distributing land to wildlife. The system has proven that local communities are more likely to protect and provide resources for wildlife when it has value to the locals living with and around it. For this reason, I think that a modified version of CAMPFIRE could benefit conserving the black rhino species from extinction.