Elephants everywhere, but where has the water gone?

By Bas Huijbregts, WWF African Species Director for the Wildlife Conservation Program, and Jake Sokol, WWF Senior Director of Philanthropy of the Eastern Region

“Look at that strange rock!” one of our guests proclaimed upon arrival at our first lodge on Impalila Island, a secluded treasure tucked away in Namibia’s Zambezi region, on the border of Botswana’s Chobe National Park. 

© Bas Huijbregts / WWF-US

It was a perfectly camouflaged treefrog, hidden on the trunk of a 600-year-old baobab tree. It was our first wildlife check during our 11-day travels across 3 Southern African countries within the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), a place like no other on Earth.  

Through scenic flights, 4×4 safari trucks, and aboard the Zimbabwean Dream, a beautiful ship built for Lake Kariba, we saw how WWF is working with communities, conservation partners, governments, and the private sector to protect KAZA’s iconic wildlife and their habitat and support the socioeconomic well-being of local communities. We visited four diverse national parks, including Zimbabwe’s famous Hwange and Botswana’s Chobe, and concluded in spectacular Victoria Falls on the majestic Zambezi River, one of the world’s largest waterfalls, and a world heritage site. 

In 2011, KAZA’s five member countries – Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – signed a Treaty to collectively manage a transboundary conservation landscape larger than California in an initiative that ranks among the world’s most ambitious conservation endeavors. Spanning the Zambezi and Okavango River systems, the landscape’s woodlands, wetlands, and grasslands provide continuous habitat not only for our frog, but also for over 600 bird species, 25% of the world’s wild dog population, 20% of the world’s lions, 15% of the world’s cheetahs, and many, many elephants. 

KAZA holds the planet’s largest connected population of elephants, enabling them to move across borders and between protected areas. In 2022, the KAZA countries, supported by WWF, undertook the first-ever coordinated and synchronized elephant survey of the entire landscape. Following 195 flights over 2 months, using 7 aircraft, and having flown 1.8 times the Earth’s circumference, elephant experts estimated that KAZA holds a staggering 227,900 African savanna elephants, over 50% of the total population of this species. And wherever we went, from Chobe National Park in Botswana to Matusadona on the southern shores of Lake Kariba and Hwange National Parks in Zimbabwe, we met them. Everywhere.  

But in these semi-arid landscapes we also saw the impact that these majestic animals have on the landscape.  

In 2024, following an exceptionally poor rainy season, triggering drought conditions throughout the region, four of the five KAZA countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) declared a State of Emergency due to the drought.  Elephants need between 150-300 liters of water per day for drinking, in addition to bathing and playing. This influences their daily activities, reproduction, and migration, and can lead to human-elephant conflict. To prevent elephants from leaving protected areas in search of water in human settlements, most protected areas in KAZA have installed artificial water sources, especially near tourism lodges.  

Artificial waterhole, Davison’s Camp, Hangwe National Park © Bas Huijbregts / WWF-US

All those thirsty elephants dominate the waterholes, chasing off other species. With no other sources of water available to them in the dry season, the elephants also stay near these water points, overexploiting the surrounding ecosystems.  

Elephant movements in KAZA are further restricted by various human barriers. Park fences, erected to keep dangerous wildlife in and poachers out, limit elephant movements. Veterinary fences, erected to separate wildlife from cattle to avoid disease transmission, have also fragmented the landscape. KAZA’s elephants also need to share the landscape with 2,5 million people, 537,000 cows, and 174,000 sheep and goats. Finally, historically large-scale elephant poaching in parts of KAZA, such as during the civil war in Angola, has further contributed to the uneven distribution of elephants across the landscape. For instance, Botswana’s part of KAZA holds about 132,000 elephants, whereas in Angola, only 5,983 elephants were counted during the KAZA elephant survey.  

And here lies the challenge: In places where elephant numbers are increasing in KAZA, they pose a threat to diminishing riverine and woodland habitats and the species dependent upon such habitats. Also, increasing elephant populations, combined with human population growth and human settlements, are leading to increases in human-elephant conflict. This could “push” elephants away from those areas. On the other hand, the KAZA portions of Angola and Zambia have large tracts of suitable elephant habitat, but with smaller populations of elephants and other wildlife (and lower human densities), which could “pull” elephants. 

To assure landscape connectivity across KAZA in a changing climate and allow KAZA’s elephants to freely move from densely populated areas to areas with greatly reduced elephant numbers, a Strategic Planning Framework for the Conservation and Management of Elephants in KAZA was developed and endorsed by the partner states in 2019 with as its vision: “KAZA’s elephants, the largest viable and contiguous population in Africa, are conserved to the benefit of people and nature within a diverse and productive landscape”. 

Important progress has been made since then. Because of the KAZA elephant survey, we now have accurate information on elephant numbers and their spatial distribution across the landscape. In addition, and based on analysis of 3.9 million GPS observations from 291 collared elephants, we have also been able to map elephant movements across KAZA over the last decade or so, which resulted in the identification of the most prevalent movement routes and elephant corridors.  

Those (transboundary) elephant movement corridors are in various stages of intactness and face the potential threat of permanent closure due to encroaching human settlements, agriculture and infrastructure developments (e.g. roads, rail), livestock disease control measures (veterinary cordon fences), and potential mining developments. 

Securing and connecting (or re-connecting) these corridors for elephants across KAZA is our collective crucially important mission for the coming years.