Saving Wild Elephants

Help Us Keep Elephants Alive in Cameroon!

Ten years ago, the N.C. Zoo partnered with the World Wildlife Fund in Cameroon to try to stop a war that had broken out between a herd of 250 elephants and their human neighbors. The battles raged during the rainy season, when the herd left Waza National Park to feed on fresh grasses inside a forest about 60 miles to the South. All was fine until that grass was gone and the herd headed back toward Waza.

The elephants always took the long way home, wandering from one farm to the next to feast on millet. Farmers and whole villages rallied to stop the raids, which often left entire fields and families in ruins.

The clashes were deadly. By migration’s end, 20 elephants would be dead and 10 people would be dead or injured. Crop losses would amount to tens-of-thousands of dollars—and angry people would be clamoring for justice and for protection from the elephants.

With a few thousand dollars from donations to the N.C. Zoo Society, the Zoo's cheif veterinarian worked with local biologists to find a solution to the problem.

Together, they affix satellite tracking collars to a few of the herd's dominate females. The collars tell us where the herd is moving, so we know when to send park rangers out to divert it away from farmlands. The location information also shows us where to concentrate local security forces to help them capture poachers. We even know which places we need to protect for elephants in the future.

After 10 years, this Waza Project has reduce elephant deaths to only one a year. Human deaths and injuries have all but disappeared. Crop losses have fallen by 60 percent. We have regained the trust of local people, and local communities have started to help us protect elephants again.

The program worked in Waza, and we have replicated its successes around other Cameroon parks, too.

Your donation will help the Zoo continue the work it started 10 years ago -- and expand the program to help more elephants and more communities across Cameroon.

To get a more detailed understanding of this project, visit Field Trip Earth, a Web site the Society sponsors so that school children and interested adults can shadow the work of field conservationists as they work in the wild to save endangered.

If you can afford to give a donation of $500 or more, we will invite you to a special luncheon and tour this spring. At the luncheon, you can meet our Chief Veterinarian, Dr. Mike Loomis, and Dr. Martain Tchamba, the head of the World Wildlife Fund in Cameroon, to hear more details about the program. Dr. Loomis will also take you on a tour of the Zoo's Veterinary Hospital.

Click here to support the Elephants of Cameroon.

Last modified 02/24/2008 01:58pm.