Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation

SOME SOLUTIONS
AND OUTCOMES:


Additional drinking points are provided for elephants


Solar-powered electric fences keep elephants out of crops, if well designed and maintained


Locally grown chillies are used effectively to deter elephants


Elephant water protection working successfully at Puros


A solution to a related problem: crocodile-proof fence


Sick elephant reported by conservancy game guards and treated by MET staff

Saving Planet Earth

How will the BBC Wildlife Fund help Namibia's elephants and people?

Elephants and people... a conflict situation

Elephants and other wildlife were brought back from the brink of extinction in the north west of the country by the community-based approach pioneered by this program. As elephants numbers grow the herds are moving east, north and south back into areas where they were shot out in the 1980s. They are not welcome. People see them as dangerous to human life and destructive to subsistence livelihoods - they raid gardens and crops, they break water installations and they use up precious water pumped for domestic stock.

This is the same situation we faced in the north-west a decade ago when elephants started repopulating that area. Today, as Jack Osbourne can testify, these communities are proud of their elephants and see wildlife as part of their social, spiritual and economic future.

£100,000
enables us to support three new conservancies where elephants are causing economic damage and putting lives at risk. This amount will also contribute to the operational costs of our six support teams.

£50,000
provides a number of new boreholes for alternative water for elephants or people so that they no longer need to share a well.

£25,000
buys IRDNC or a conservancy a new 4 x 4 vehicle to use in the rugged, remote north-west of Namibia. It will also buy electric fencing to protect gardens from elephants.

£10,000
enables us to provide start-up funding for a new conservancy for a year and contribute to the costs of our support staff.

£5,000
pays for a study tour, taking the leadership of an emerging conservancy or a group of community sceptics to visit a conservancy that has learnt how to live with elephants and derives economic benefits from wildlife.

£1,000
buys a tent and camping equipment.

£500
funds a large conservancy planning meeting.

£250
buys boots and uniforms for community game guards.

£100
buys three pairs of binoculars.

£10
pays a community game guard's salary for a week.

We urgently need to expand and intensify our work into the new areas where elephants are now moving. We need to work closely with communities to help them form conservancies and start deriving some direct benefits from living with wildlife including the elephants.

We need to pay and equip community facilitators; they need 4 x 4 vehicles and fuel to work in this vast, rugged and remote part of arid Africa. Emerging conservancies need start up funds to help them organise and mobilise, conservancy game guards need salaries and equipment - boots, binoculars, tents and uniforms. We need solar powered electric fencing to protect gardens and we need funds to enable communities and their leaders to meet and make plans. In our part of the world where distances are great holding a meeting means a week's work: two days to collect people, a day or two for the meeting and then taking everyone home.

We also need to ensure that our established western conservancies are working well and to continue providing technical support there. Exchange visits by communities are useful for experiential learning but are expensive to run.

Problems... and solutions

The tourist's experience of an elephant is very different from the perception of a rural Namibian who lives with elephants on a daily basis. Tourists pay a lot of money to visit Namibia and experience our elephants in their natural habitats - Namibia's majestic and rugged wild landscapes. In striking contrast, local people living in these harsh lands struggle to maintain water points to provide water for themselves and their livestock, and to grow crops to eat.

The extensive experience of IRDNC can be put to good use in tackling these problems - old and new - through land use planning, innovative resource management techniques and other locally-developed solutions.

IRDNC is committed to building on our previous successes to secure the future of people and elephants in Namibia in a way which is beneficial to both.