Using Location Monitoring to Reduce Human Wildlife Conflict

Liwonde in Malawi uses EarthRanger to achieve a sustainable balance between wild elephant protection and community safety and prosperity.

Location

Liwonde National Park, Malawi

Deployment Date

Jul 13, 2017

Deployment Partner

Vulcan

Published Date

October 15, 2019

Challenge:

With their metabolism, elephants are required to eat for 16 or more hours a day. This translates into a lot of eating, and makes calorie rich crops especially attractive to roving pachyderms. This challenge is familiar to farmers near Liwonde National Park in Malawi, where elephants’ crop raiding costs farmers lost revenue and increases tension between humans and wildlife. With the risk of their crops being eaten at night, farmers were required to stay up through the night to scare animals away, and in some instances would be forced to take violent means to protect their crops.

Resolution:

Managed in partnership with African Parks, Liwonde’s security team uses EarthRanger to monitor when elephants pass geographic boundaries in order to intervene before they reach farmers’ crops. With the geo fences in place, Liwonde rangers are able to constantly monitor the park boundary for potential human wildlife conflict. They are also more quickly able to respond to geofence breaks and intervene before tensions escalate with community members.

Liwonde National Park, Malawi

Village near Liwonde National Park, Malawi

Impact:

With reduced crop raids, farmers have achieved better crop yield and greater proceeds from crop sales, which allow them to send children to school. With increased access to education, more people around Liwonde are developing skills to pursue employment and contribute to their communities. What is more, human deaths from animals has decreased as interventions are applied before mortal conflict arises. With African Parks more quickly responding to potential conflicts, community trust has grown as well.