Villagers Angry About Elephants
Absalom Shigwedha
25 March 2010



ANGERED by the destruction of their water points by elephants, the community of Omatjette in the Erongo Region wants the conservation authorities to remove the elephants from their area.

But the Ministry of Environment and Tourism has pleaded with the community to view elephants as having economic value.

At a meeting he held with the affected community on Tuesday last week, the Deputy Director for Parks and Wildlife Management in the Ministry, Colgar Sikopo, needed to exercise his wildlife management communication skills to make the community understand that wildlife is important to their economic well-being.

He said the community was insisting that the elephants should be removed from the area.

"But we advised them to see them as having economic value as they can derive benefits from them through trophy hunting," Sikopo said, adding that the Ministry had made some efforts to protect water points from elephants.

He said the new Ohungu conservancy in this area was likely to be given a elephant trophy-hunting quota in the future and an air elephant count in the Erongo and Kunene regions will be conducted this year to determine the size of the population.

Sikopo said so far they had erected 12 elephant barrier walls around community water points in Erongo Region with money sourced from the Game Products Trust Fund.

He said community campsites and lodges could also be built in the conservancy, generating an income for the community.

Before the Tuesday meeting, Sikopo said, the Ministry had seen two wounded elephants in Omatjette area and they suspected that the two were wounded by local people.


He said the Ministry had seen four groups of about 9 to 12 elephants each in the Omatjette area and estimated that about 50 to 70 elephants were in the area at the moment.

He said these were the same elephants that moved around Kalkveld in the Otjozondjupa Region and Sorris-Sorris in the Kunene Region.

The Omatjette community claimed that elephants destroyed their water points and other properties and the Ministry did not compensate them for their losses.

Tsukhoe //Garoës, the Head of the CBNRM programme, said human-wildlife conflict was one of the major challenges facing the programme.