Human Wildlife Coexistence
Our planets wild areas have become islands surrounded by humanity. Human-elephant conflict mitigation tactics are creating the foundations for sustainable coexistence, between the wildlife and people who live around the boundaries of these protected areas.
Solar Electric Fence
Human wildlife conflict is a huge challenge for most protected areas all over the world, and as African elephant range becomes more and more fragmented and as elephants get confined into smaller pockets of suitable habitat, humans and elephants are increasingly coming into contact and in conflict with each other (IUCN on Human Elephant conflict). Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 80% of its population relying on subsistence farming. Food security is crucial. Elephants raiding crops, and injuring and even killing people have negative impacts. In an effort to conserve one of Malawi's flag ship species and reduce vulnerable communities and increase food security, WAG are erecting solar powered electric fences around the reserves which has to date proved to be an effective measure to deal with human-elephant conflict. If you wish to donate to help continue to build the solar powered electric fence - click below to donate.
Sensitization & Alert system
Wildlife Action Group works closely with local people and officials, to promote peaceful human-elephant coexistence. We do this through raising awareness at local level of how to stay safe if you encounter an elephant, and implementing quick, clear communication channels so people can alert us to an incident, and we can deploy our rapid response teams. Our aim is to safely return any animals seen outside of the protected area, mitigating loss of crops and risk to people lives. Capacity building amongst communities, enables them to manage animal encounters in a safe manner, and understand exactly how to quickly report an animal sighting to us. Posters with our contact details have also been placed in each community chief’s house. Identified community members are trained in HEC and supplied with firecrackers which enables them to deal directly to any occurrence. The community fence scouts, who are responsible for the fence are an integral part of the process. We record and monitor all human-elephant conflict activities. Our social economic surveys are also an important source of data when monitoring the impact of the human-elephant conflict mitigation strategies. Individual elephants that repeatedly leave the protected area are, where necessary, collared with satellite tracking device’s, so they can be closely monitored. This helps us gather vital spatial data of elephants in border areas, areas of conflict or areas outside of the forest.
Rapid Response
WAG strives to immediately respond to reports of human-elephant conflict. Deploying our rapid response ranger units to the site area, keeps both people and elephants safe.
As soon as we are alerted to an issue our teams immediately mobilize to safely push elephants out of farmland and back into the forest.
