Great Plains is Driving Change

The Okavango Delta in Botswana is a desert oasis the spans 11,000 square miles, bringing abundant wildlife to its waters. As such, it hosts one of the largest concentrations of elephants in Africa, which is a gift and a privilege. It is obvious why humans and elephants have conflict. Injured or persecuted elephants flee to easier, softer feeding areas where they can access the crops in community settlements. Often farmers come in contact where they have just recently planted.

During a recent reconnaissance mission, Great Plains Conservation spoke to traditional chiefs who presented a solution to the human/elephant conflict. If Great Plains could provide small mobile tractors to turn the soil of the original, designated farmland, which had been left fallow, they could protect that land, produce from it, and reduce conflict.

Great plains donated the tractors and hope for increasing farm quality, minimizing the scale of planted areas, and safeguarding people – will propagate a better working and living relationship between humans and wildlife, particularly elephants, in the western villages of Botswana.