By Bas Huijbregts, WWF African Species Director for the Wildlife Conservation Program, and Jake Sokol, WWF Senior Director of Philanthropy of the Jap Area

“Have a look at that unusual rock!” one in all our friends proclaimed upon arrival at our first lodge on Impalila Island, a secluded treasure tucked away in Namibia’s Zambezi area, on the border of Botswana’s Chobe Nationwide Park. 

© Bas Huijbregts / WWF-US

It was a wonderfully camouflaged treefrog, hidden on the trunk of a 600-year-old baobab tree. It was our first wildlife test throughout our 11-day travels throughout 3 Southern African nations inside the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Space (KAZA), a spot like no different on Earth.  

Via scenic flights, 4×4 safari vehicles, and aboard the Zimbabwean Dream, a gorgeous ship constructed for Lake Kariba, we noticed how WWF is working with communities, conservation companions, governments, and the non-public sector to guard KAZA’s iconic wildlife and their habitat and help the socioeconomic well-being of native communities. We visited 4 numerous nationwide parks, together with Zimbabwe’s well-known Hwange and Botswana’s Chobe, and concluded in spectacular Victoria Falls on the majestic Zambezi River, one of many world’s largest waterfalls, and a world heritage website. 

In 2011, KAZA’s 5 member nations – Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – signed a Treaty to collectively handle a transboundary conservation panorama bigger than California in an initiative that ranks among the many world’s most bold conservation endeavors. Spanning the Zambezi and Okavango River programs, the panorama’s woodlands, wetlands, and grasslands present steady habitat not just for our frog, but additionally for over 600 chicken species, 25% of the world’s wild canine inhabitants, 20% of the world’s lions, 15% of the world’s cheetahs, and plenty of, many elephants. 

KAZA holds the planet’s largest linked inhabitants of elephants, enabling them to maneuver throughout borders and between protected areas. In 2022, the KAZA nations, supported by WWF, undertook the first-ever coordinated and synchronized elephant survey of all the panorama. Following 195 flights over 2 months, utilizing 7 plane, and having flown 1.8 occasions the Earth’s circumference, elephant specialists estimated that KAZA holds a staggering 227,900 African savanna elephants, over 50% of the overall inhabitants of this species. And wherever we went, from Chobe Nationwide Park in Botswana to Matusadona on the southern shores of Lake Kariba and Hwange Nationwide Parks in Zimbabwe, we met them. All over the place.  

However in these semi-arid landscapes we additionally noticed the impression that these majestic animals have on the panorama.  

In 2024, following an exceptionally poor wet season, triggering drought circumstances all through the area, 4 of the 5 KAZA nations (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) declared a State of Emergency as a result of drought.  Elephants want between 150-300 liters of water per day for ingesting, along with bathing and enjoying. This influences their day by day actions, replica, and migration, and may result in human-elephant battle. To stop elephants from leaving protected areas seeking water in human settlements, most protected areas in KAZA have put in synthetic water sources, particularly close to tourism lodges.  

Synthetic waterhole, Davison’s Camp, Hangwe Nationwide Park © Bas Huijbregts / WWF-US

All these thirsty elephants dominate the waterholes, chasing off different species. With no different sources of water out there to them within the dry season, the elephants additionally keep close to these water factors, overexploiting the encompassing ecosystems.  

Elephant actions in KAZA are additional restricted by varied human boundaries. Park fences, erected to maintain harmful wildlife in and poachers out, restrict elephant actions. Veterinary fences, erected to separate wildlife from cattle to keep away from illness transmission, have additionally fragmented the panorama. KAZA’s elephants additionally must share the panorama with 2,5 million folks, 537,000 cows, and 174,000 sheep and goats. Lastly, traditionally large-scale elephant poaching in components of KAZA, comparable to through the civil battle in Angola, has additional contributed to the uneven distribution of elephants throughout the panorama. As an illustration, Botswana’s a part of KAZA holds about 132,000 elephants, whereas in Angola, solely 5,983 elephants have been counted through the KAZA elephant survey.  

And right here lies the problem: In locations the place elephant numbers are rising in KAZA, they pose a risk to diminishing riverine and woodland habitats and the species dependent upon such habitats. Additionally, rising elephant populations, mixed with human inhabitants development and human settlements, are resulting in will increase in human-elephant battle. This might “push” elephants away from these areas. However, the KAZA parts of Angola and Zambia have massive tracts of appropriate elephant habitat, however with smaller populations of elephants and different wildlife (and decrease human densities), which may “pull” elephants. 

To guarantee panorama connectivity throughout KAZA in a altering local weather and permit KAZA’s elephants to freely transfer from densely populated areas to areas with tremendously diminished elephant numbers, a Strategic Planning Framework for the Conservation and Administration of Elephants in KAZA was developed and endorsed by the associate states in 2019 with as its imaginative and prescient: “KAZA’s elephants, the biggest viable and contiguous inhabitants in Africa, are conserved to the advantage of folks and nature inside a various and productive panorama”. 

Vital progress has been made since then. Due to the KAZA elephant survey, we now have correct data on elephant numbers and their spatial distribution throughout the panorama. As well as, and based mostly on evaluation of three.9 million GPS observations from 291 collared elephants, now we have additionally been in a position to map elephant actions throughout KAZA over the past decade or so, which resulted within the identification of essentially the most prevalent motion routes and elephant corridors.  

These (transboundary) elephant motion corridors are in varied phases of intactness and face the potential risk of everlasting closure resulting from encroaching human settlements, agriculture and infrastructure developments (e.g. roads, rail), livestock illness management measures (veterinary cordon fences), and potential mining developments. 

Securing and connecting (or re-connecting) these corridors for elephants throughout KAZA is our collective crucially essential mission for the approaching years.  

Pixabay