Sometime last year I wrote about Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) in Botswana. I noted that HWC is a recurring theme in the country. The Okavango Research Institute (University of Botswana) has been assigned to work on the Human Wildlife Conflict Strategy and Action Plan. In this regard, during the months of July and August, the ORI team will be consulting stakeholders countrywide to source ideas on how this strategy and Action Plan should be.
I noted in the past that HWC is an issue of concern for many regions of Botswana. Elephants are reportedly the main animal in matters of human-wildlife conflicts in the country. Northern Botswana or the KAZA region has an estimated 134,000 elephants. As such, Botswana has the largest elephant population of elephants in Africa if not the world. While this is the case, about 20 to 30% of the elephants live within protected areas such as game reserves and national parks. Most of the elephants live outside game reserves and national parks, hence the conflicts with humans.
Human-wildlife conflict is borne out of competition for limited resources, including water, forage, and space for both wildlife and human beings. As human settlement increasingly expands, areas that have been historically inhabited by wildlife are converted into agricultural land for grazing areas for livestock and crop production, in this regard conflicts escalate.
The main causes of HWC in Botswana, therefore, include crop damage caused by wild animals such as elephants, kudus, and hippos. Livestock predation caused by lions, hyenas, wild dogs, cheetahs, and crocodiles. In this regard, HWC is most concentrated and impactful within agricultural regions where the human population is rather high. In this regard, human population growth, agricultural intensification, and wealth creation have limited the living space and resources for both humans and animals, creating conflict. HWC is therefore in many regards a form of land use conflict.
The results of HWC are dire. Wildlife can destroy crops, livestock, infrastructure, and human lives. Wildlife can thus pose a direct threat to the safety, livelihoods, and well-being of people. For example, when elephants forage on crops and kill people, predators kill livestock and people. As such, people can lose their livelihoods. Sometimes agro-pastoralists adopt retaliation measures against the species blamed often ensues. For example, there have been incidents where farmers poison carcasses, and this results in vultures and other wildlife species that scavenge dead carcasses dying after eating the poisoned carcasses.
The most widespread methods for lessening human-wildlife conflict come in the form of mitigation or finding ways to keep wildlife out of areas with high human populations or agricultural density. Approaches that have been used to reduce human-wildlife conflict include the following: chili pepper plant fences, burning chili pepper bricks, Bee fences, electric predator-proof fence kraals, livestock guard dogs, planting early maturing seeds, and alternative livelihoods in the tourism sector.
However, farmers often defend their crops and livestock from wildlife by guarding their land personally or by using fencing or scarecrows, or keeping their livestock on closed kraals at night.
HWC can, in many places, be controlled through effective land use planning. Separating people and livestock from wildlife through land use buffer zones, and fences and creating migration corridors that can serve to reduce the prevalence of conflict and thereby help to alter local community’s perceptions of wildlife. It is from this bases that a HWC Strategy and Action Plan is long overdue in Botswana.
