With a shake of her massive head, she quickly moved around the vehicle, leading another 30 elephants behind her. Dust filled our nostrils, ears and eyes, but we kept them wide-open, anxiously looking through the haze for more. We realized we weren’t on the edge of the corridor, we were right in the middle of it!

The Okavango panhandle is a unique area… a system where wildlife, in particular elephants, and people struggle to live within a confined area.The purpose of the survey is to answer pertinent questions as to the area’s population of elephants, their growth rate, their limited movements, an insight to human-elephant conflict in the region, and to potentially be able to put forward various management options to relieve elephant compression and their conflict with people.

Kachikau’s death is tragic and sadly unnecessary. The issues surrounding the incident are extremely complex, but they threaten African elephants throughout the continent.

…main purpose of the site will be to assess methods and low-cost techniques that work best to reduce elephant crop raiding, train villagers in deterrence methods and productive conservation farming methods, and to motivate community involvement in human-elephant conflict resolution and adopt wildlife conservation practices