What the future holds for human-elephant project

Low cost solutions and high revenue ideas

The next few years will be critical, for it is the next and final phase of the project where Noah will attempt to take his successful trials out into the wider TransMara area. 

If his ideas, his tests and his trials do not work on a wider scale, or are not adopted by farmers, then all the hard work will have only added to the growing knowledge about human elephant conflict, but will have failed to answer the very real problems local people face on the ground.

Why this project will succeed
"We will show them how they can use the resources they already have." says Noah. And he cites how farmers' associations are already being formed and how these are already helping to mitigate risk by spreading it over the community.

Maasai's see the connections
One extremely positive sign for the future success of the project is, as Noah says "They understand the connection between forests and rivers. They know that if the forests go, so will the rivers, and the water for their cattle and themselves will disappear."

Thus Noah's efforts to get people to set aside portions of land to form conservation areas - areas where the elephants can stay and where farming is not allowed - should bear fruit. Creating such areas will allow the wildlife room to live beside their human neighbours. And at the same time as reducing pressure on what space the elephants have left, it can also hold potential long term economic benefits that can be gained from tourism.

Low cost solutions to reducing crop loss
All the methods that Noah has employed to date (early warning watchtowers, chili string fences etc) are not expensive to implement, easy to maintain, can be rotated, and use only items that are already available locally. Such considerations are key if any mitigation effects are to be adopted voluntarily on a wider TransMara scale.

Using the ideas of others
One of the principal reasons why conflict has increased between man and animal in the TransMara region is the fact that in an area once only grazed by cattle, there are now a multitude of planted fields. With this change in land use, the balance between man and wildlife in the area has been altered. The land now provides animals such as the elephant with an alternative and altogether more nutritious and better tasting diet.

This is why Noah wants to promote the work of GTZ, the German government's aid agency, in their efforts to improve the quality of the maasai livestock. This would then take away the monetary incentive to plant crops which they they can then harvest and then sell.

Huge economic benefits
An improved breed of bull from GTZ can sell for as much as 30 to 40,000 Kenyan schillings (up to USD480). That is almost twice what the Kenyan government would pay in compensation to the family of an elephant victim. It is also 5 to 8 times more than they would get for selling the type of cow they have now in their herds.

With such large economic benefits. the Maasai could be persuaded to stop planting crops, and the increased revenue may also mean the Maasai would need fewer cattle and so ease pressure on the land.