The goal is to find long-term sustainable solutions to the ever-growing challenge of ensuring peaceful cohabitation between subsistence farmers, community members, and desert-adapted elephants.

 

Thanks to dedicated efforts by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC), Save the Rhino Trust, and other NGOs over the past 20 years, the population of desert-dwelling elephants in the region has increased from as few as 52 individuals to an estimated 150 today.

 

While the return of the elephants is widely seen as positive, it also creates challenges for the people living in the areas they now inhabit.