Botswana Elephant Management Plan and Action Plan 2021-2026.

The Botswana Elephant Management Plan is a subsectoral document aiming to conserve optimal elephant populations while ensuring the maintenance of habitats and biodiversity, promoting the contribution of elephants to local economies and National development while minimizing their negative impacts on rural livelihoods. The Plan provides (i) a platform for participation by all interested and affected parties, within Botswana and internationally, through proposed actions and activities, methods and targets; (ii) for monitoring and evaluation of the implemented actions. Management of elephants involves a broad spectrum of stakeholders ranging from communities, private sector, NGOs and Government departments and agencies, and Local and International Cooperation Partners. It sets out the following 3 targets (1) maintain viable populations of elephants in Botswana through minimal interference and, where necessary by adaptive management; (2) ensure elephant populations do not adversely impact on biodiversity conservation goals and community livelihoods goals; (3) involve all sectors in the realization of the full economic potential of elephants and other wildlife resources outside to protect areas through sustainable utilization.
To achieve the targets established for elephant management in Botswana, 6 key components have been identified. (1) Protection and law enforcement: ensuring the protection of elephant populations through rigorous field investigations, anti-poaching operations, and effective law enforcement to minimize elephant mortality and habitat loss. Key actions include securing adequate annual funding, training wildlife crime investigators, strengthening cross-border and international intelligence cooperation (including collaboration with INTERPOL), and improving the monitoring and enforcement of hunting and protected area regulations to combat illegal wildlife crime. (2) Human-elephant conflict management: creating an enabling environment for reducing and preventing human-elephant conflict (HEC) by implementing practical mitigation measures that promote coexistence. These measures include constructing physical barriers, such as electric and beehive fences, establishing safe wildlife corridors through settled areas, reviewing community compensation and self-insurance schemes, and distributing meat and other products from elephants that have died naturally or been legally culled to local communities in order to increase tolerance toward elephants. (3) Habitat management and ecological connectivity: maintaining elephant populations within ecologically acceptable limits through biological, ecological, and management monitoring based on an adaptive management approach. Priority actions include monitoring habitat conditions, conducting regular aerial wildlife surveys, protecting vulnerable vegetation through the use of physical barriers, and adapting management interventions based on data generated by the Management Oriented Monitoring System (MOMS). (4) Social and economic framework: enhancing the contribution of elephants to rural livelihoods and national development by strengthening community participation and economic incentives. This component includes supporting community trusts, promoting formal partnerships between communities and safari operators, establishing an electronic database to monitor hunting parameters (such as trophy age and ivory weight), and ensuring the transparent and equitable distribution of benefits derived from both consumptive uses (including regulated trophy hunting) and non-consumptive uses (such as ecotourism). (5) Conservation capacity: strengthening adaptive management through adequate human resources, infrastructure, equipment, technical expertise, and sustainable financing. The strategy prioritizes addressing institutional capacity gaps, promoting research, enhancing data analysis within the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP), providing continuous training for law enforcement personnel, and equipping local communities with paper-based monitoring tools. (6) Coordination and collaboration: strengthening cooperation among national and international stakeholders by appointing a full-time National Elephant Coordinator and establishing a multi-stakeholder National Elephant Conservation and Management Committee. The strategy also calls for formal cooperation agreements with neighbouring countries to harmonize anti-poaching initiatives and transboundary elephant conservation efforts.