Living with elephants

Fostering coexistence in the Okavango Delta of Botswana

Katie Moulton

International Programs

December 8, 2023

Three adult savanna elephants with five baby elephants walk in a line across a dirt road. Telephone poles with power lines run along the road. Trees, shrubs, and dry grasses fill the landscape. — *A family of elephants cross the roadway, a common occurrence in the Okavango Delta. (Forest Service photo by Elisa Osborne)*

Ecoexist partners with Forest Service training specialists to help Botswana farmers and families share methods for living peacefully with endangered savanna elephants.

Dangerous encounters

Young Daniel Sekunja whooped, yelled, and banged sticks before three large African elephants. He employed the best tactic he knew – make noise—to deter the hungry pachyderms from destroying his family’s crops. The intelligent elephants, wary of humans and their often-violent responses, viewed his antics as a threat and charged. Daniel narrowly escaped with his life by diving into a downwind bush.

His family’s livelihood was trampled. He realized he needed a better method to protect his family’s crops.

Decades later, Sekunja now works for Ecoexist, a non-government organization based in Botswana’s Okavango Delta that is committed to reducing elephant-people conflict and fostering coexistence. Their mission is to conserve elephants by supporting the people who live with them.

An older African man sits in a chair in the shade of trees. A younger man stands to his right, hands crossed in from of him. Another younger man sits on the ground behind him. — Daniel Sekunja (right), an Ecoexist member, tells the story from his youth of an elephant charging him and destroying his family’s food plot. It was then he was inspired to find better ways to live alongside elephants while also keeping people, crops, and homes safe. (Forest Service photo by Elisa Osborne)

Botswana has the largest population of free-roaming elephants in the world. Based on the 2022 aerial survey of the seasonal distribution of elephants in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, approximately 150,000 call Botswana home. The survey estimated 227,900 African Savanna elephants throughout this region, which represents more than half of the total remaining population of Savanna elephants.

Sekunja’s elephant confrontation story is common in the Okavango Delta, where people and elephants compete for water, food, and space. In the dry season, when elephants shelter in the Delta, there can be just as many elephants as people. Even if an individual has not personally been charged by an elephant, they know of someone who has. The threat looms large.

Empowerment through sharing

On the left is an illustration of an elephant and cloth fence with hot chili coating between it and a stand of crops. On the right is an illustration of a delta wetland with a winding river, wetlands, forest, and grassland. — Ecoexist shares best practices, such as fabric fencing coated with spicy pepper or using the terrain to understand where the elephants will naturally want to go, to mitigate the risk of elephants trying to enter sensitive areas like vegetable gardens and living areas. Forest Service training specialists helped Ecoexist create visuals to help provide the information to people of different ages and learning styles. (Forest Service graphics)

Villagers tell their stories of coexistence, including their challenges and solutions to sharing resources and space. From years of accounts and experience, Ecoexist developed a curriculum of coexistence methods, from effective deterrents, like chili-soaked rags or beehive fences, to considering elephant migration routes when planting crops. Noise can be a deterrent, too. However, elephants are smart, and people need to adjust their deterrents to keep them effective.

With funding support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Ecoexist partnered with the International Programs Office of the USDA Forest Service to expand and refine the Ecoexist curriculum for trainers like Sekunja.

Forest Service training specialists helped Ecoexist incorporate active learning into the program, which considers different learning styles in the classroom. The Ecoexist suite of materials includes wildlife flash cards and a landscape simulation exercise.

A cloth is spread on the ground with smaller pieces of cloth and models are laid on top representing roads, water bodies, animals, and deterrence measures. Three men stand by the fabric display, talking to nine men and women who sit, listening in a circle of chairs around the display. — Ecoexist members pilot test a landscape simulation exercise developed with Forest Service training specialists using models to represent the landscape, animals and deterrence measures. The simulation will be used to help Ecoexist members teach human-elephant coexistence strategies at primary schools. (Photo courtesy of Ecoexist)

In February 2023, Ecoexist community officers test piloted the delivery of the first learning module on Coexistence in Nature between People and Wildlife at 14 schools, presenting to more than 450 students and almost 80 teachers. Feedback from the pilot delivery was positive.

Hope for human-elephant coexistence

A woman in a Forest Service baseball cap talks as she gestures with her hand to a large printed graphic illustration of a river delta held by another woman in a Forest Service baseball cap. They are outdoors, shaded by trees. — *Forest Service trainers Farrah Masoumi and Elisa Osborne helped develop the visual training materials and simulations in collaboration with Excoexist members. (Forest Service photo by Beth Hahn)*

Teachers indicated that the lesson goals of identifying essential components of human and wildlife habitat, understanding the many roles of elephants within the Okavango Delta, and recognizing the causes and potential solutions for human-wildlife conflict were consistently met at each school talk.

More than 80% of teacher respondents to feedback surveys said that their view of elephants was changed by the lesson. They wrote that they now understand that elephants “have advantages” as seed dispersers and firewood creators. They also appreciated the instruction on “how to survive with elephants”.

William Moniwe, an Ecoexist Community Officer, also said that community and school outreach is working, because now the community wants to “try dealing with elephants in a good way, one that benefits both the people and elephants.”

The Okavango Delta, recognized by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, is the single largest tourist center in Botswana and a major employer. Ecoexist supports an “elephant economy” as part of its community outreach by encouraging people to improve their livelihoods with elephant-themed commerce. In the process, communities reframe their outlook on elephants, from danger and loss to opportunity.

Aerial view of the Okavango Delta with a river winding through mixed wetlands and grasslands. — *On the Okavango Delta a river winds through a Botswana landscape where humans and elephants learn to peacefully coexist to the benefit of both. (Forest Service photo)*

This article was developed thanks to the contributions of Elisa Osborne from the Forest Service.