RESTORING ELEPHANT PATHWAYS BY APPLYING INNOVATIVE COEXISTENCE MODELS ON PRIVATE LAND.
Private commercial farmers experience deep frustration and financial losses due to elephants walking across farm boundaries, breaking fences, and other infrastructure. Elephants get shot or otherwise removed as a response to these problems.
The Corridor Project looks at the question ‘How can free-roaming elephants utilize the commercial farming landscape whilst elephant-caused damages are reduced drastically?’
EHRA works to find sustainable solutions for both elephants and people by identifying where elephants regularly break fences using long-term elephant movement data and innovating elephant-friendly collapsible fences. This way, elephants can utilize the land without causing the usual financial damage.
INITIATIVES
COLARING ELEPHANTS
By using satellite collars on elephants, we can understand their movements and identify main pathways and fence breakage points. This is fundamental in finding long-term solutions to HEC on communal and commercial farmland.
FARM SURVEYS
To find long-term solutions for individual farms and the entire landscape, we must understand the setup of each property. Through direct surveys and remote sensing, we will map fences, land uses, rivers, and water points.
ELEPHANT ALERT SYSTEM
Using the platform EarthRanger, we created geofences around each village and farm and initiated an automatic Elephant Alert System. Collaborative farm owners and conservancy chair people receive alerts if collared elephants have crossed the geofence. This helps to anticipate elephant visits and aids fence management and immediate repairs on commercial farms.
ELEPHANT-FRIENDLY FENCES
We are looking at how elephants could transit the farms’ fences safely and without causing damage. Because elephants often use the same entry points, we will trial ‘elephant-friendly’ fences at such points and observe the efficacy of the fences.
ELEPHANT CENCUS
If elephants are to be managed sustainably and responsibly, the total number of herds and bulls must be known. EHRA works to complete an elephant census and ID database of elephants for the two main Elephant Management Areas of EHRA’s area of operation, namely Kunene South and Greater Omatjete.
SPOTLIGHT
Using collared elephant data to plan future management and as a real-time tool to mitigate conflicts in form of the Elephant Alert System, creates a sense of local empowerment and ownership of the human-elephant coexistence challenge. It also helps EHRA to plan projects better and recognize risks early and act accordingly. For example, one newly collared herd visited a homestead every night for several months. With the full support of the elderly lady that lived there and the local conservancy, we built an elephant drinking dam on the elephant pathway but further away from the homestead. The risk of a potentially dangerous confrontation between people and elephants was hereby lowered significantly.
VISION & MISSION
Our vision is to integrate free-roaming elephants into the farming landscape by reducing the associated human-elephant conflicts and thereby expanding available elephant habitats. Our mission is to secure the future of Namibia’s elephants that live outside of National Parks and enable a future for them on human-dominated land. This is particularly important as the mentioned problems persist and increase with changing climatic conditions and an expanding human population. We strive to create a mutually beneficial and peaceful relationship between elephants and people by using technology and innovative ideas. We hope that our solutions will help other people, organizations, and governments that face similar challenges elsewhere.
IMPACT
Elephant ID
177
free-roaming elephants in 16 herds have been identified
Collars
3
collars fitted on two males and one herd. (As of February – hopefully: 7 collars fitted on three males and four herds.)
Elephant alert system
3
Elephant Alert Receivers enrolled in our trial.
Camera traps
6
Camera traps were installed to track elephant presence and aid the elephant census.
