Too many elephants? GPS collars help Zimbabwe villagers to avoid deadly encounters

In the dusty borderlands of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park , a silent battle plays out daily between survival and conservation. As climate change fuels longer drought periods and shrinks food sources, elephants increasingly stray into nearby villages in search of water and crops, which often have deadly consequences.

To prevent these confrontations, a new high-tech early warning system is combining satellite data with old-fashioned community grit. Whenever GPS-collared elephants approach the buffer zones that separate wild lands from human settlements, local volunteer Capon Sibanda springs into action.

“Every time I wake up, I take my bike, I take my gadget and hit the road,” said Sibanda, 29, one of dozens of trained “community guardians” working to keep both people and elephants safe as reported by AP.

The GPS alert system, part of an initiative by Zimbabwe’s wildlife authority and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), was introduced in 2023. It uses real-time tracking and the EarthRanger platform to monitor collared elephants, especially matriarchs, a woman who is the head of a family. Digital maps track movements and trigger alerts when animals cross invisible red lines separating protected and community lands.

This fusion of technology and community outreach has already begun to shift the dynamic. “We still bang pans, but now we get warnings in time,” says Senzeni Sibanda, a local farmer and councilor.

But the problem is bigger than GPS can fix alone. Zimbabwe’s elephant population, estimated at 100,000 is nearly double what the land can sustain. Yet culling (killing animals in a group) has been off the table for more than four decades due to conservation pressure and high costs, but the human toll is rising,18 people were killed by wildlife between January and April this year; 158 aggressive animals were killed in response.

The larger debate to cull has drawn global attention, some southern African nations, including Zimbabwe and Namibia, have proposed radical ideas from legalizing elephant meat to offering excess animals to other countries like Botswana’s then-president offered to gift 20,000 elephants to Germany, and the country’s wildlife minister mock-suggested sending 10,000 to Hyde Park in the heart of London.

Still, many see the tracking initiative as a hopeful step forward. So far, 16 elephants have been collared. It’s a small start in Hwange, home to 45,000 elephants, but officials say it helps them make smarter, faster decisions based on real-time data.