Overview of 2024 and our current focal activities

2/23/2025

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(This post is in the process of being updated and additional photo materials will also be added)

We realize that it is has been some time since our last activity update in November 2023. 2024 was an extremely busy year, especially in terms of our work out in the field - much of which was focused on coping with the severe drought conditions that were rapidly unfolding, with progressively accelerating impacts that were placing both people and migratory wildlife at critical risk. Last year was one of Botswana’s worst droughts in the past 40 years, and it was characterized by a near complete failure of the 2023/24 rainy season, coupled with an unprecedented heat wave of >40°C temperatures, lasting three months (January to March 2024) during what would normally have been the peak of the rainy season.

We are deeply grateful to our donors and partners for their support during this challenging time, which enabled us to keep our community based wildlife monitoring program going, and ensure that our two remote wildlife boreholes continued to operate optimally to cope with the accelerating water demand of migratory wildlife, including hundreds of elephants.

To recap, these are the outputs of the NG3 wildlife monitoring project as a whole:

Provision of much needed employment to the indigenous San communities;
Anti-poaching surveillance to help keep migratory wild life safe from commercial poaching syndicates and promote population recovery;
Dry season water provision via KWT’s remote boreholes to mitigate loss of traditional dry season range access in areas where people now live, thereby also avoiding population losses associated with dehydration stress and conflict with humans;
Conservation and revival of endangered traditional knowledge systems through active mentorship between elders and younger men during patrols and borehole monitoring work shifts;
Gathering of wildlife spoor data to better understand the wildlife population dynamics, movements, sensitivities, feasibilities for sustainable use, and to assess wildlife densities and changes over time for the purposes of evaluating the success of this program over time in maintaining and improving biodiversity; (see link)
Facilitate cross border wildlife movement and landscape connectivity by securing NG3 as an un-fragmented corridor, and continue monitoring cross border wildlife movements as an integral part of the monitoring program;
By strengthening the program and replicating it in other areas and countries, an ideal foundation will be established for incorporating early burning emissions abatement work into these existing environmental monitoring activities, thereby reducing costs of fire management and ensuring long-term support and participation by the target community beneficiaries, who already culturally identify with the practice and rationale behind early burning.

Had it not been for this support, these vital conservation services would not have been possible, and there most certainly would have been severe dehydration stress, terrible suffering and likely loss of animal life during the 2023/24 drought. The good news however, is that the rains finally arrived in mid-December 2024, breaking this drought and resulting in abundant grass growth and a good supply of dispersed seasonal water holes to enable these populations to recover physically and hopefully breed well this year. Adapting to the severe and unpredictable consequences of climate change is imperative if we are to preserve our planet’s biodiversity.

Early stage, moderate drought period (March to August 2024):

Peter and Vicky Stevens, Lis Leader, Lecia and Peter Foston, and Grant Wienand, for their valuable contributions towards Morama ("Eastern") wildlife borehole maintenance and operating costs.
Thad and Sara Tucker for their incredible support to our Western NG3 wildlife monitoring teams and base camps and in particular the Western Wildlife borehole: Thad and his team also played a critical role in helping us to adapt to the emerging drought by installing a secondary (“western”) pipeline and water outlet to cope with rapidly increasing elephant pressure on the existing “eastern” pipeline and outlet.

Late stage, severe drought period (September to December 2024):

SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund (Germany/Botswana), for their first response funding support in late September, enabling us to start dealing with a critical failure at our Western (G/hui!han) Wildlife Borehole, which suddenly placed hundreds of elephants and other wildlife at immediate risk of severe dehydration stress. Their donation covered repairs to a damaged pipeline and paid for new solar panels and a new submersible borehole pump.
Elephants Crisis Fund, an initiative by Save the Elephants and the Wildlife Conservation Network, through two (2) emergency grants enabled KWT to complete critical repairs to its Western Borehole, install the new solar borehole system, and fund operations and upgrades at both boreholes (Eastern (Morama) and Western (G/hui!han)) as well as KWT’s overall NG3 patrol program. This got us through the most critical time, ensuring we were able to cope with the accelerating wildlife water demand while waiting for the rains to arrive, and the remaining funds will cover our operations up to March 2025.
Future for Elephants, for their sponsorship in December 2024 of a 15m x 15m solar powered electric fencing installation around the Western borehole, to help prevent elephant tampering with the borehole panels and piping, which unless prevented can prove disastrous to the operation of the boreholes and outflows to the outlet points.

We also are grateful for support from Maki Planet Systems (Maki) for helping to cover costs of the wildlife monitoring program during early to mid 2024, in addition to the main objective of KWT’s collaboration with Maki and the International Savanna Fire Management Initiative (ISFMI), which is to promote the participation of local communities in the carbon markets through establishing community Savanna Fire Project areas: This aims to establish fire carbon credit value in areas affected by frequent unseasonal wildfires, by implementing “early burning” based on age-old hunter-gatherer traditional knowledge systems, which reduces dry fuel loads (leading to fewer large fires in the hottest and driest time of the year), while also reducing annuals emissions – thereby essentially creating a carbon credit value. This has great potential as a game changer for financing community-led conservation programs and livelihood initiatives, thereby incentivizing wise resource custodianship and governance, habitat restoration and coexistence with wildlife. It also will ultimately reduce the pressure on donors, tourism enterprises and Government (social welfare programs) to fund conservation and sustain local communities in semi-arid areas. Currently we are participating in a fellowship training program in Northern Territory, Australia sponsored by the Australian Government and hosted by the ISFMI, entitled “Supporting enabling environments for emissions reductions savanna fire management (Southern Africa and Indo-Pacific)” which will impart on KWT and other Botswana delegates (Department of Forestry and Range Resources (DFRR)) valuable experience and skill enabling us to collectively work towards establishing successful community savanna fire project areas in Botswana, for emissions abatement, habitat restoration and sustainable livelihood development through long-term financial arrangements linked to the carbon markets. ISFMI and Maki will play a key technical and support role together with KWT, DFRR and other community stakeholders.

Other KWT activities:

NG3/NG2 wildlife data analysis:
With support from WWF and Maki and other donors in early 2024, we were able to analyze a portion of our accumulated wildlife spoor data (gathered by way of the community monitoring patrols) to generate species density estimates for the survey areas as well as NG3 as a whole, and produce a variety of mapping outputs to show wildlife species density gradients along the surveyed routes. We have posted these mapping materials here. The results will be compared with other years and seasons to identify long-term trends, once additional funds have been secured. Preliminary findings indicate that our project has been effective in promoting overall wildlife population recovery (unlike most other unprotected wildlife habitats in Botswana, where poaching is rampant), with healthy breeding populations, relatively safe from poaching gangs, now established in large parts of NG3, including for a number of IUCN red listed species. KWT is thankful to our technical partner, Marie-Charlotte Gielen for her hard work in analyzing our data, generating species density estimates and mapping the results. This work is also an impressive tribute to the hundreds of man hours spent by our hardy San patrol teams on a monthly basis doing their 2 to 3 week long foot patrols under challenging conditions to capture this data from the depths of the NG3 wilderness.

Conservancy and CBO establishment:
KWT is also in the final stages of setting up three legal entities (Community Based) to empower target communities, some of whom are San, to engage in sustainable use of their ancestral lands in portions of areas NG1, NG2 and NG3. Through a diversified, scientifically based and traditional-knowledge guided land use approach, these entities and their constituent communities are aspiring towards self-reliance with regard to the decision-making and use and management of their natural and cultural resources. Early burning emissions abatement, tourism, wildlife monitoring and low-impact traditional subsistence gathering and hunting are envisaged to be the core activities generating revenues and livelihood income for these communities. Habitat and biodiversity restoration, food security, education, cultural preservation, economic empowerment and capacity development are the long-term intertwined goals of these target communities. We wish to also thank Random Good Films for their efforts in completing a film documenting the hopes and struggles of the Khwe in protecting their culture and traditional way of life and their endeavors to secure legal custodianship over ecologically-intact remaining portions of their traditional territories in western NG1, which are currently threatened by fires, land grabs and poaching disturbances: In this regard KWT also hopes to raise funds to implement a community based wildlife monitoring program modelled on its established program in NG3.

Oral History program:
We would also like to acknowledge the support of Megan Biesele and the Kalahari Peoples Fund, who support our work in recording endangered knowledge systems of the Ju/hoansi San in NG3. The project also provides support to “G!haimm” otherwise known as the “healers camp” which was set up several years ago with the help of KWT to enable surviving Cgaegcae healers to have a free and private space on their ancestral lands (outside of the settlement environment) to reinforce their healer skills and pass on knowledge to younger community members and other apprentices – free from disturbance and commercial exploitation. A number of ancient hunter-gatherer skills are in danger of becoming extinct unless a concerted effort is made to urgently revive and transfer these skills to younger generations. KWT needs support to further develop this program and replicate it in other areas threatened by loss of traditional knowledge. An aim is to restore the rightful place of these ancient skills in the local communities, so that future generations can continue to benefit from these important elements which are essential to their identity, harmony and well-being as San.

Savanna Fire Forum 18th to 20th Feb 2025, Darwin Convention Centre: