Coexisting with elephants in droughts

Climate change threatens the coexistence between communities and the Kunene highland elephants.

While the elephants and humans in the northern Kunene Region, formerly known as the Kaokoveld, have coexisted for years, the recent prolonged drought in 2018-19 greatly reduced the resources available to humans, livestock and wildlife.

This is especially the case in the Kunene Mountains, which host many villages on the western boundary of the Etosha National Park. This area also hosts highland elephants, a remarkable sub-population of Namibia’s elephants.

Drought's impact

Both humans and elephants are threatened by prolonged droughts, particularly as competition for water becomes increasingly intense. Elephants are known for becoming destructive if they do not find water where they expect it, like at pumped water points.

Repairing pumps or water tanks is expensive and difficult in remote areas, so communities have little choice but to ensure that elephants have water to drink, even if pumping extra water requires spending more money on fuel.

The people in northwest Namibia have also had to adapt to drought as many of their livestock died, which saw them starting to grow vegetable gardens near their homes or expanding existing gardens.

These gardens became a new source of conflict, however, as elephants started wandering into the villages in search of this new food source.

Managing conflict

Namibia uses a community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approach to wildlife conservation outside national parks, which allows local communities to make decisions on how to manage their natural resources by establishing communal conservancies.

Although some conservancies are able to create jobs and distribute community benefits due to income generated from elephants and other wildlife, this has not been the case for the Orupupa Conservancy.

A first step towards a solution came in 2022 when Orupupa signed a 20-year service-level agreement with Conserve Global, operating through its local entity, Kunene Conservation, to address key challenges across the landscape and deliver benefits to both people and wildlife.

An important early win has been to secure support from the Elephant Crisis Fund (ECF) to implement vital measures to safeguard critical waterholes, with several positive outcomes that bode well for the future.

Monitoring

Other than game guard records, there is also no regular monitoring of elephants in the highlands to track their movements and estimate their population. Knowing more about elephant movement is key to developing solutions and strategies that work for this conservancy.

However, game guards need more support as they currently lack adequate resources and equipment to carry out their basic duties, let alone to expand their work to include elephant monitoring.

We know from other communal areas and private farmlands in Namibia that walls and electric fences can deter elephants from vegetable gardens and water infrastructure.

The Namibian government - with funds from the Game Products Trust Fund, the Environmental Investment Fund and assistance from non-governmental organisations - continues to upgrade waterholes across the Kunene Region.

However, the scale of the problem means that it will be many years before all waterholes meet this elephant-proof standard.

- Adapted from Conservation Namibia blog