Bees Saving Elephants in Kenya

We're excited to share the news of our latest development to scale up the programme, by offering this practical and peaceful solution to District governments in Northern Tanzania. This allows us to support multiple high-risk crop-raiding areas at one time, providing the tools, training and equipment to Districts, who are responsible for the welfare of several communities. By doing so, we are able to secure farm boundaries across adjoining villages, thus ensuring that the next village does not see an increase in crop raiding, as a direct result of deterring elephants from the previous village's land. This technique coincides with our mission to preserve critical wildlife corridors. By protecting farms with beehive fences, we're not only repelling elephants from entering and eating crops, but also ensuring that cultivated land does not further encroach on wild habitat, with the incentive of an additional livelihood from honey and wax sales to compensate for the restriction of further farm expansion.

We're delighted to announce our partnership with PAMS Foundation, to trial the District level human-elephant coexistence programme in Karatu District, which borders the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA). The Ngorongoro Crater is a UNESCO World Heritage site, famed for it's unique biodiversity, and home to approximately 1,000 elephants. Two vital wildlife corridors, Upper Kitete and Larja, form a migration network from the Crater to Lake Manyara and Tarangire National Park. By delivering a multi-village solution with the beehive fences, we aim to protect communities on the perimeter of the NCAA forest boundary, who also border the two migration routes, and are in frequent contact with the elephants. The forest forms a buffer area between farms and the Crater. It's essential to engage and empower communities in the protection of the forest, and its wild inhabitants. The bees also offer a solution to this, with beekeeping enterprises that are established to provide a sustainable income source, and means of protecting the forest.  

Together with PAMS Foundation, we will be training Elephant Guardians - members of the community who are equipped to support beehive fence installations. The EG responsibilities also include patrolling the area daily to ensure the fences are maintained, and to observe elephant movements - collecting crucial data on elephant grazing, their access to the corridors, while engaging with community members to address any concerns or issues.