My article!

http://www.kepa.fi/uutiset/7101

English translation:

Pest Control in Botswana

A few days ago an elephant was shot in our village. Because the elephant in question was caught in a field raiding crops, it was a perfectly legal way of removing a problem animal. However the elephant didn’t die straight away but managed to run away, badly injured. She had two calves with her, an older and a younger one. The elephant was found in a nearby bush, still breathing, her calves still around. At dusk she was finally shot dead, and her children ran away into the bush. Eventually the elephant will end up in the cast iron pots of the villagers – many of whom see elephant meat as a rare delicacy, why waste perfectly good meat?

I’m in Botswana, in the Eastern Panhandle of the Okavango River, so far away and isolated from the rest of the country that the area is often referred to as “overseas” even by Motswanas. The only way to enter this area is by crossing the river with a somewhat unreliable ferry, as building of the bridge promised by the government a long time ago has once again been deferred. In addition, bringing electricity here is yet to happen, not to mention tarring the main road.

The area of 9800km2 in size is populated by 13000 people and 9000 elephants, and it’s increasing at a faster rate than the human population. Tourism and diamonds have not yet brought employment here to the same extent as in the rest of the country, meaning that majority of the population get their livelihood straight from their fields.

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Elephants visit these fields during the night and they are not bothered by the bush fences that have been put up in order to stop them. These gentle giants like to feast particularly with watermelons, but also with the rest of the crops found in the fields here: millet, sorghum, maize and pumpkins. What is not deemed edible gets trampled under their enormous weight, and after the elephants have left it’s easy for the cattle, that roam free everywhere, to get in to finish off the destruction.

Even though the elephant is just one of the troubles that the farmers are facing, it is probably the most feared one and also the most significant politically. The hunting of elephants has been banned in this area for years, and contrary to the rest of Africa, the elephant population in Botswana is on the increase. The country’s elephants are officially the property of the government, and the farmers believe that they haven’t done enough to tackle the crop raiding problem. With all this in mind, it’s no wonder that the relationship between elephants and people in the area has gone somewhat sour.

“When both people and elephants have to live in the same area, sharing the same space, there is competition for food and water”, says Anna Songhurst, who is researching human-elephant conflict in the area for her PhD. The locals claim that the damage caused by elephants is getting worse every year, and the problem isn’t going to disappear by itself. New fields are being established all the time, and many of them on ancient elephant pathways.

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Rra Ndozi is sitting outside his clay hut under a tree. He has lived and farmed the land in this area for all his life (around 90 years), excluding the years spent in the South African mines. The elephants have already raided his field several times this year, and once again his harvest has been poor. But unlike many of the farmers in the area, Rra Ndozi doesn’t think that killing the elephants is the answer to the problem, even though he still recalls the time when selling ivory for the white men was an excellent source of income for the locals. He wouldn’t even touch elephant meat, as it is a totem animal for his tribe. The Bayei believe in people and elephants being one family; the elephants are both our mothers and fathers.

The government pays nominal compensation for crop damages caused by elephants, but the people expect more from them. Even though Rra Ndozi is a very wealthy man with his 100+ cattle herd, he is not willing to invest his own money to build a proper wire fence around his field. He thinks the government should provide money for the farmers to build better fences to protect their fields, or move the elephants away from the area altogether. If the government fails to tackle the problem soon, he thinks that the people in the area will no longer be able to rely on farming as a means of livelihood.

There is no easy solution to the issue, but Anna Songhurst is hoping to utilise her research findings in the search for a possible solution. In the meanwhile, both the elephant and human populations will continue to grow along the Okavango river, the farmers who have lost their harvest will have to come up with other means of providing for their families, and more elephants will be shot in the fields.