Name: Cecilia Dikoro

Village: Mohembo East

As a 25-year-old Bahambukushu ECO for the Village of Mohembo East, Cecilia lives quite close to the border with Namibia. In her village, she says, human-elephant conflicts are a “big problem.” She reports elephants start coming in large numbers, usually in the month of February, and often with their babies in tow. That’s the time of year when the crops are maturing and farmers are starting to sleep in watch huts, guarding their fields at night. That is also the time of year when she is especially busy helping supply chilies and teaching farmers to use the chilies to deter elephants from crop raiding.

Name: Masimo Mate

Village: Sekondomboro

Masimo is a farmer from the village of Sekondomboro. He says many people in his village have suffered sleepless nights because of the elephants. One elephant was injured this year and one killed. But there’s hope for the future as more and more farmers in his area are talking about using chilies to keep elephants out of fields.

Name: Hakoka Xhoro

Village: Tobera

Since 2009, 38-year-old Hakoka, a Bukakhwe Bushman from Tobera, has represented his village in the task of documenting and trying to reduce human-elephant conflicts. He first worked with the Okavango Elephants and People Research Project with Anna Songhurst. As an enumerator in that project, he helped report on and assess elephant crop damage in farmers’ fields in Tobera. Now with the Ecoexist project, he says, “I like working with people in my community” and he says people seem to appreciate learning how to use chilies to keep elephants out of fields.

Name: Maipelo Molathegi

Village: Beetsha

Maipelo is a 29-year-old Bahambukushu farmer from the village of Beetsha. In his role as ECO, Maipelo has been encouraging farmers in his community to plough early enough to be able to harvest before elephants begin moving through the villages to the Delta waters. He says farmers can also help prevent crop raiding by using chilies. Elephants dislike capsicum, the chemical in chilies that makes them hot. By drying and crushing chilies and then mixing them with elephant dung to make “chili bombs” for burning, farmers can keep elephants at bay. Aside from encouraging people to make chili bombs, Maipelo spends time walking around his village, helping his neighbors and our team keep track of where elephants are moving most frequently.

Name: Mathata Kashongo

Village: Xakao

Mathata Kashongo is a 36 -year-old Bahambukushu man from the Village of Xakao. In 2014, Mathata attended to at least 18 cases of crop raiding in the areas in and around his village. He says even more alarming than the number of cases was the number of elephants—male herds of 4-15 elephants. He reports more damage this year compared to other years. One of the challenges is maintaining fences. He said the damage the “big feet” can cause, and the amount of maintenance and repair required are “mind boggling.” A lot people in his village know, or are related to, a man in a nearby village who was killed by an elephant. That death has generated even more fear. Women who go out to collect firewood, for example, have tended not to venture as far as they used to. Mathata says he is proud to be a voice for the Ecoexist project and he describes his work as “finding ways for people and elephants to live in close proximity with less friction between them.”

Name: Minimini T Jwee

Village: Ngarange

Minimini has worked with the Ecoexist team, first with Anna Songhurst, for many years. She is a 27-year-old Anikhwe Bushman woman from the Village of Ngarange. Minimini notes human-elephant conflicts have diminished somewhat in her village recently. At least, she says, she’s had fewer reports of raiding, maybe because farmers in Ngarange were able plough and harvest “on time” this year, meaning they were able to harvest before the elephants began their movements to the permanent waters of the Delta. Minimini says she is always trying to encourage people to be conscious of timing of their farming activities to avoid competition and conflict with elephants.

Name: Motoloki Morena

Village: Gudigwa

Motoloki is a 28-year-old Bukakhwe Bushman and a long-time team member. He first worked with Anna Songhurst’s research project on human-elephant conflicts in the eastern Panhandle, and now he serves as an ECO. His role is to serve as a source of support and information between the people in the Village of Gudigwa and the Ecoexist project. In 2013, Motoloki reported two elephants in Gudigwa were shot as they were raiding fields. This year, though crop-raiding has occurred, no elephants were shot in fields. Motoloki says he is most concerned about finding ways for people in his village to benefit from elephants.

Name: Oboletse Tiego

Village: Mogotho

Oboletse (“O.B.”) is a 30-year-old Bahambakushu farmer who supervises the communal chili plot in the village of Mogotho. O.B.’s work includes coordinating with the Village Development Committee to ensure the field is watered and cared for. He also serves as a trainer for farmers who want to learn conservation agriculture techniques. He reports 11 fields were raided in his village this year. Though no people or elephants were killed or injured as a result of human-elephant conflicts, one elephant did kill a cow.

Name: Boiteko Tlale

Village: Gunotsoga

Boiteko is from the Village of Gunotsoga, and he’s begen working with the Ecoexist team in 2014. This year, he reports, though elephants raided six fields, people in Gunotsoga generally encountered fewer problems with elephants. He attributes the decrease in conflicts and crop-raiding to the fact more farmers have started using chili peppers. Boiteko is also involved in helping maintain the Ecoexist community chili garden in Gunotsoga.

Name: Lethata Chibokekwe

Village: Mokgacha

As a farmer and ECO, 23-year-old Lethata has learned some basic facts about elephants and crop-raiding. In his area, he’s observed, mostly elephant bulls tend to raid, and usually at night during the months of March and April. He says the elephants seem to prefer maize, sorghum, millet, and watermelon, and sometimes they destroy huts where food is stored. Two elephants were killed in his village this year. Whenever a crop-raiding incident occurs, Lethata visits the farmer and field, trying to go as prepared as possible to answer any questions.

Name: Rukonga Namavunga

Village: Kauxwi

Rukonga is one of three female ECOs working on the Ecoexist team. The 30-year-old Bahambukushu farmer says her role is to be a voice for the people of Kauxwi in helping reduce conflicts with elephants. As part of her work, she visits with the village chief every day and checks in with the wildlife officers and police to learn of any new elephant damage or crop-raiding incidents. She’s learned many people in her village believe elephants are crossing the border fence between Namibia and Botswana. She would like to see people benefitting more from elephants, with camps and lodges in place for tourists, or through basket weaving, story telling, and other arts for visitors.

Name: Tsalano Florence Kgobero

Village: Seronga

Tsalano joined the Ecoexist team in 2014. She completed her certificate in Business Studies, and she is saving money, with hopes to complete her diploma soon. Aside from Tsalano's important role as an ECO, helping us record incidents of human-elephant conflict in the Village of Seronga, she is also helping us generate enthusiasm and ideas for building the elephant economy in the Panhandle.

Name: Rocio Pozo

Rocio is from Chile. She began her PhD training in Zoology at the University of Oxford, with a recent focus on elephant population modeling. Rocio has a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Chile, and in Conservation Science from Imperial College London. She has extensive experience studying animal behavior in various parts of Africa and Latin America. Rocio’s mentor at the University of Oxford is Prof. Tim Coulson.

Name: Lauren Redmore

Lauren is from the U.S. She will begin her PhD at Texas A&M in 2015, with a focus on social, cultural, and economic factors influencing human settlement and resource use. Lauren has degrees in Biology and Religion (Dickson College) and Forest Science (Oregon State University). She has been living in Cameroon since 2009, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer, with expertise in Agroforestry, and now as a social scientist and project manager for a Darwin Initiative award with the London Zoological Society.

Name: Patricia Chilume

Patricia is from Botswana. She will begin her PhD at Texas A&M in 2015, with a focus on community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and tourism. Patricia has training in Tourism Management from Austria (Institute of Tourism Management) and the U.S. (Johnson and Wales University, and the George Washington University). She is currently Head of Policies and Programmes at the national Department of Tourism in Botswana.

Name: Susanne Vogel

Susanne is from the Netherlands. She has started a doctoral training program at Oxford University in 2014, and through this program she will do a PhD in Zoology, focusing on elephant ecology and their movement patterns related to crop raiding. Susanne has a BSc and MSc degree in Forest and Nature Conservation combined with International Development studies from the Wageningen University. She also has a diploma in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology from Leiden University. She has worked with Save the Elephants-South Africa and has done research on elephant crop raiding for her BSc, and chimpanzee and Baboon crop raiding for the Jane Goodall Institute, Uganda for her MSc.

Name: Prof. Timothy Coulson

Prof. Timothy Coulson is a quantitative ecologist and Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford. His research interests are conservation, wildlife management, and population biology. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed articles, supervised more than 20 Ph.D. students, and he currently runs a group of six post-docs and six Ph.D. students. He has been awarded the Zoological Society of London Scientific medal, the TH Huxley memorial medal, the Per Brinck award and a Royal Society-Wolfson merit, all for contributions to the life sciences.

Name: Dr. Sarah Durant

Dr. Sarah Durant is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, where she heads the People, Wildlife and Ecosystems research theme. She has worked on carnivore conservation for over 20 years, with a focus on Africa. She heads the Range Wide Conservation Program for Cheetah and Wild Dogs and the Tanzania Carnivore Program. She has a particular interest in capacity development for conservation, monitoring conservation success, human carnivore conflict, and international policy.

Name: Dr. John Hanks

Dr. John Hanks is a Cambridge zoologist with a PhD on the reproductive physiology, growth, and population dynamics of the African elephant in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia. He has 45 years of experience in a wide variety of conservation management and research projects throughout Africa. He has published over 150 scientific papers, and has supervised nearly 50 MSc/ PhD students. He has served Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Natal, Director of the Africa Program for WWF International, the Chief Executive of WWF-South Africa, and the first Executive Director of the Peace Parks Foundation.

Name: Rebecca Klein

Rebecca Klein is the Managing Director and Founder of Cheetah Conservation Botswana, with a MSc in Conservation Biology and experience in several global conservation programs. CCB was set up in 2003, to promote the conservation of the cheetah and other threatened carnivores, through scientific research, community outreach and education. The project investigates and promotes best practices in livestock and range management and non-lethal control methods that can reduce human carnivore conflict and support coexistence.

Name: Dr. Winnie Kiiru

Dr. Winnie Kiiru is a Kenyan biologist with over 20 years experience in wildlife conservation and management. She earned her PhD in Biodiversity Management from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, studying the spatial, temporal and socio-economic dynamics of human-elephant conflict around Amboseli National Park. While working as a research scientist with the Kenya Wildlife Service, Dr. Kiiru published the first status report on human-elephant conflict in Kenya in 1995 and presented it to the African Elephant Specialist Group becoming a pioneer member of the Human-Elephant Conflict Working Group.

Name: Dr. Annette Lanjouw

Dr. Annette Lanjouw is the Director of the Arcus Foundation's Great Apes Program. A highly regarded expert in the field of great ape conservation, she has worked with chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas in the wild, and has years of experience in the areas of conservation strategy, program implementation, research and field work. Dr. Lanjouw recently served as the International Program Officer for the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, where she advised the Howard Buffett Foundation on conservation strategies and organized an international effort to expand access to water. From 1993-2003, she was Director of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, a collaboration of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, African Wildlife Foundation and Fauna & Flora International, which has successfully worked to secure safety for the fewer than 800 mountain gorillas that inhabit rangelands that cross three countries (Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda).

Name: Dr. MD Madhusudan

Dr. MD Madhusudan works at the Nature Conservation Foundation (India), an organization dedicated to science-based and socially-responsible conservation that he co-founded in 1996. As a conservation scientist, he is interested in learning about the scope—and the limits—of coexistence between wild species and humans, especially across India's densely settled landscapes. He seeks this understanding by conducting research into the ecology and behaviour of wildlife as well as the functioning of human society, by planning and implementing experimental solutions to real-world conservation problems in partnership with a range of stakeholders.

Name: Mike La Grange

Mike La Grange grew up on a farm outside of Mutare, Zimbabwe, where he developed bush skills as a child. He had degrees from Gwebi Agricultural College and the University of Zimbabwe. He worked with the Department of Internal Affairs as an agricultural officer (where he spent more time dealing with problem animal control issues than with farming), and then with the Department of National Parks. He is an expert in finding innovative tools for overcoming human-wildlife conflicts (HWC). He has written and provided training on management for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) HWC Toolkit.

Name: Dr. Loki Osborn

Dr. Loki Osborn has examined human-wildlife conflicts for over 20 years. Osborn’s PhD focused on the ecology of crop-raiding elephants in Zimbabwe. For ten years, he ran the Elephant Pepper Development Trust, which worked with rural farmers to develop protocols to enable them to protect themselves and their crops against elephants and to provide a market for chillies. He started Elephant Pepper, a commercial business that used the chillies grown and harvested by African farmers in a range of food products. He assisted the Government of Botswana develop the Okavango Delta Management Plan, and he has worked on a World Bank project to mitigate human-wildlife conflict in Botswana.

Name: Prof. Marianne Schmink

Prof. Marianne Schmink is Professor of Latin American Studies and Anthropology, and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida, where she served as Director of the Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) program from 1988-2010. Since 1980, the TCD program has provided fellowship and research funding, academic and professional skills training for graduate students involved in research on conservation and development in Latin America and Africa. From 1986-2008, she directed a major collaborative program in the western Amazonian state of Acre, Brazil, with the Federal University of ACRE, research institute EMBRAPA, and non-governmental organizations PESACRE and CTA. She has worked on issues related to gender, development, and community-based conservation for over twenty years.

Name: Prof. Raman Sukumar

Prof. Raman Sukumar is professor of ecology at the Indian Institute of Science. He obtained his PhD from the same institute in 1985 for his pioneering research on the ecology of interactions between Asian elephants and people. His interests lie in promoting sustainable landscapes for elephants and biodiversity. Sukumar has also contributed extensively to Indian government policy on conservation, and has been a member of the Indian Board for Wildlife (chaired by the Prime Minister) and the Project Elephant Steering Committee. The author of four books on the elephant and over 120 scientific papers, Sukumar is the recipient of several national and international awards.

Name: Dr. Russell Taylor

Dr. Russell Taylor has over 30 years practical conservation experience in government, NGO and private sectors, holding senior positions in leadership, management and administration. Prior to joining WWF, he worked for the Department of National Parks & Wild Life Management in Matusadona National Park on Lake Kariba where he completed his PhD on the population ecology of buffalo and contributed to the development of Zimbabwe’s CBNRM programme, CAMPFIRE. This led to 20 years with WWF, supporting the implementation of CAMPFIRE, and becoming Conservation Director for the WWF Southern Africa Regional Programme Office. He is Senior Transboundary Conservation Planning Adviser with WWF in Namibia and working with the KAZA TFCA partner countries of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Name: Dr. Rob Williams

Dr. Rob Williams is a British conservation ecologist living in Peru. He holds a BSc in Zoology from University of Wales College Cardiff and PhD in Conservation Ecology from University of East Anglia. He has worked on six continents for organizations including: Sociedad Española de Ornitologia, BirdLife International, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is currently the Andes-Amazon Program Coordinator for Frankfurt Zoological Society and also Scientific Director of the Chaparri Community Ecological Reserve in northwest Peru. His interests are: applied wilderness conservation through protected areas; conservation of wide-ranging, low-density threatened species; and seeking solutions for humans and wildlife to coexist.