By Madison Busacco of University of Vermont
Here in Mababe, we’ve spent our first days learning how to navigate life in the bush. We are at this camp, Dizhana, for 19 days, so we’ve done our best to make it feel like a home. Our tents form a welcoming semi-circle, our fire pit is decorated with an elephant’s femur and ribs, we’ve set up a tarp to provide us with some much-needed shade, and I’m sure other decorative projects will be underway in the coming days. But for now, our focus revolves around daily transects in the field.
Perhaps the most awe-inspiring sight to date occurred on the route back from our second practice transect. After a relatively uneventful morning (an understatement considering we saw blue wildebeest, warthogs, a leopard tortoise, and a handful of male elephants and matriarchal elephant herds), someone in my car once again shouts “elephant!” as the rear end of a large elephant comes into view. We slow down, notice a few more, and as our car continues forward we become completely surrounded by maybe 20 elephants? Or is it 50? As the shrubland turns into grassland, it’s become clear there are well over 100 of them. Some are near, some are far, some eating, others running, sleeping, flapping their ears to stay cool, and many are quite interested in our presence.
Seeing elephants’ grey bodies dotting the horizon, with some close enough to see every fold of leathery skin, is not only a humbling experience but also a testament to the strong elephant population here in Botswana. Over 200,000 elephants reside in the country, comprising approximately half of Africa’s elephant population. While this is excellent for elephant conservation and fanatics worldwide, it means the Batswana (the people of Botswana) are the center of human-elephant conflicts. This became clear from our initial drive into camp, where we saw a woman tending to her crops while a large bull was browsing in the scrub behind her. These megafauna are notorious for trampling crops when passing through towns and villages, destroying farmers’ fields, food, and livelihoods. And, with a healthy population, human impacts on ecosystems, and shifting weather patterns due to climate change, these conflicts will only continue.
Of course, the human-elephant conflict cannot be resolved overnight. But, a large part of our daily transects revolve around mapping, aging, determining sex, and recording the behavior of elephants so as to better understand the species, the Okavango Delta’s population, and individuals. Hopefully, through analysis of this data, we can work towards ensuring successful elephant conservation through environmental, social, and economic lenses.
