Sustainable solutions
for the Coexistence
of Wildlife and People
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Human Elephant Landscapes Program
The program is concerned with developing solution models for the coexistence of humans and elephants in some of Africa's elephant regions. In many regions of Africa, there are small local projects or village communities that have developed solutions for their own coexistence with elephants and other large mammals, while in other areas conflicts are escalating. The idea behind the Human Elephant Landscapes Program is to document solutions that work and to apply them in other regions and to combine them into a larger whole and create "coexistence landscapes" that benefit humans and wild animals and that can also serve as models for other regions. The Human Elephant Landscapes Program is a direct response to the displacement and forced relocation of indigenous communities that continues to occur in the name of conservation. The Human Elephant Landscapes Program is currently our most recent program and the focus of our work.
Our program follows three steps:
1. We collect and document innovative solutions from local, often indigenous, communities and local conservation organizations for coexistence with elephants in Africa.
a. We shoot a documentary film in Kenya.
b. We look for innovative solutions for coexistence with large mammals throughout Africa by awarding a conservation prize.
2. We implement the knowledge gained in a concrete project.
3. We examine the transferability of our model to other regions in other African countries.
Step I:
HELP for Coexistence - The Film
More and more indigenous communities are documenting their sustainable way of life or developing their own conservation projects, because they are the ones who have lived on their land alongside wild animals for many generations. This often results in very good conservation projects by local village communities that combine with the work of local conservation organizations. Other projects round off the picture to create a fascinating whole. Reforestation projects, wildlife-friendly agriculture, permaculture. Social projects complete the overall picture. Most of these very good, often small projects are hardly known internationally, so there is usually a lack of resources to implement them.
A large whole can emerge from many puzzle pieces, a landscape of coexistence
between humans and wild animals. This is the topic we are working on. By improving the living conditions in village communities, people are more willing to work to protect the surrounding nature and to develop their own conservation projects.
Many of them are so fascinating that they more than deserve international support. That is
why we are planning a film. A film about indigenous conservation in Kenya, which serves as an example for many other countries in
Africa where similar developments are taking place. With our film, we are pursuing a vision that it is possible to preserve large
habitats for humans and wild animals in the long term, even with a constantly growing population.
It is a film about hope, but also about our work at Human Elephant Landscapes Program.
Human Elephant
Landscapes Program - Our Award
With our film (step 1) we document innovative solutions for coexistence with wild animals, ecosystem restoration and help for the local population. For cost reasons, we limit the film production to Kenya. But people in other African countries have also developed solutions for coexistence with wildlife, have set up projects to revitalize degraded landscapes or developed new, more sustainable forms of pastoral farming. It is impossible to visit them all and document them on film. In order to be able to document such often indigenous nature conservation projects, you first have to find them. Many of these projects do not have a website and if they do, you can only find them through extensive research. We have found some of these projects over the last few years through our work on site in Kenya and through research. We suspect that many other projects are somewhere in Africa, hardly known and usually without sufficient financial support. We would like to promote such projects as a valuable investment in global species and climate protection and as a model for a new future nature conservation. And we would like to document your locally developed ideas and solutions and respond to them. With our film (step 1) we document innovative solutions for coexistence with wild animals, ecosystem restoration and help for the local population. For cost reasons, we limit the film production to Kenya. But people in other African countries have also developed solutions for coexistence with wild animals, have set up projects to revitalize degraded landscapes or developed new, more sustainable forms of pastoral farming. It is impossible to visit them all and document them on film. In order to be able to document such often indigenous nature conservation projects, you first have to find them. Many of these projects do not have a website and if they do, you can only find them through extensive research. We have found some of these projects over the last few years through our work on site in Kenya and through research. We suspect that many other projects are somewhere in Africa, hardly known and usually without sufficient financial support. We would like to promote such projects as a valuable investment in global species and climate protection and as a model for a new future nature conservation. And we would like to document their locally developed ideas and solutions and check whether they can be transferred to other regions so that they can be applied in large, connected "coexistence landscapes". That is why we plan to regularly support such nature conservation projects in Africa by awarding a grant. It has been shown that many projects are in contact with each other, so that even small projects without an internet presence can find out about the award via the "bush phone". By presenting their projects and submitting a project description, knowledge and experience can be archived and also applied in other regions of Africa.
Step II:
Human Elephant Landscapes Program Mount Elgon
The Human Elephant Landscapes Program Mount Elgon
When implementing the program, we follow 7 points:
1. Help reduce wildlife conflicts.
2. Improvement of living conditions in village communities.
3. Education and environmental education.
4. Habitat protection and renaturation.
5. Active involvement in non-invasive wildlife monitoring and poaching prevention.
6. Ecological tourism with small local lodges and homestays.
7. Global networking with other indigenous projects.
Step III:
HELP for the forgotten Elephants
Due to the steady decline of elephant populations in Africa, more and more small "islands" are emerging on the edge of the former distribution areas outside of the core zones such as the Okavango Delta or the Serengeti, where most of the remaining elephants live, where sometimes only a few dozen or a few hundred animals have survived. While many conservation organizations are focused on preserving at least the large populations, our project is dedicated to these "forgotten" elephants. Since they often live without protected areas or only in relatively small national parks, the pressure to get along with the human population around them is particularly great. It is particularly important for these animals to have solutions for coexistence that can also be implemented in these conflict zones. We hope that the solutions found in the previous parts of the program can also be applied to these "forgotten" elephants.