The conflict around humans and elephants is that essentially they occupy the same spaces in Africa in particular, You know, you have these human settlements and they're living off the land, they're in agriculture, they're in pastoralism, and they come into conflict with elephants because elephants overlap those territories as much as the humans overlap the elephant territories.

There is a lot of risk in people standing up on their own.

And people have died from elephants here.

And there is a lot of destruction when they move through.

It is a serious concern for elephants to be in the village.

elephant or so kill people.

Elephant also create permanent disability.

That means we have to work hard to make sure that we understand how and why the elephants moving from the village and which methods we can use to push the elephant outside, out of the village.

Notice how he's putting himself between us and them now?

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering.

Yeah.

There's one in there th.. You have people who are spending their whole life, all of their resources, all of their effort trying to raise crops, raise money, establish their families, feed their families and have a life.

And these elephants come into these areas and find crops and they find humans in places that maybe they weren't before.

And elephants do what they do.

They're large mega vertebrates and they need to eat.

And when they encounter something that's frightening or scary in their territory, they may try to displace that thing.

The KACF really works on fusing the cultures between people in Colorado, with people around the world, and it's all in order to get conservation connections and sustainability efforts to help people and wildlife coexist.

Today we were so amazed to meet the District Executive Director when she heard that we are in Same and that we are doing activities with the community and family, she really wanted to just to make us feel welcomed.

And from her talk, she really understands what family is and she really has a real good desire to see Same grow.

Katie Adamson is definitely very community focused.

They start everything at the community level and build consensus, build buy in, build support.

And Dave Johnson in particular, as long as I've known him, he is about connections.

He is never selfish with his knowledge or any of his resources or any of his connections.

And if there is a way for him to connect to the community or as a thought leader in the community or a governmental official in the community together to produce a stronger outcome and to create more buy in and a more lasting effect for the projects, he'll do it.

The key mission of TEF is promoting elephant conservation in Tanzania through scientific research, public awareness, and enhancing human elephant coexistence Smell him?

He’s just showing off.

Head shake.

It is a very interesting story when I met Mr. David Johnson, one of my friend who is working around western Serengeti he was looking for a person who is specialized on elephant conservation.

By then I was partnering with the government doing elephant collaring in southern Tanzania.

And he mentioned that, uh, KACF team was in Tanzania.

-We were leaving Tanzania out of the Kilimanjaro airport and Lameck came to meet with me.

I said, “Hey, I've got a little window while we're at the airport.” That's all we could give him because our schedule was so tight.

And I did... like 15, 15 minutes presentation about elephant conservatio..

He's collared down in Nyerere and Ruaha.

And so we did that and that's what formed this bond.

So through there we became partner and we started to work together in southern Tanzania for the beehive fences project.

These beehives were created to keep elephants out of crop lands around villages because the elephants will raid the crops and eat whole crops.

Whole incomes for the year for the villagers.

It's a box, it's suspended between poles an.. at every gap between two hives in the fence, there's a fencing wire that connects the fence, the beehives.

So if an elephant or a rhino happened to stumble into the beehive fence or bumped that wire, then it rocks it, which disturbs the beehives.

And if the hives are wiggled or disturbed in any way, the bees fly out, they will sting the elephants behind their ears or in their trunks.

Elephants never forget anything, so they will not like that.

And they will avoid this area.

If they can in the future.

And then this is high up so that the honey badgers can't get to it.

And it's all strung together to stop the elephants from going through the fences.

So you hit one of these cables and it swings everybody, and then the bees come out.

So that's what it's for.

Here come the elephants, here comes the female.

The idea of this project is to target those elephant heards who are going to the local communities who are out of the protected area and causing a lot of impact a lot of, you know, crop raidings other threats to the community.

In order to do that, we are devising two ways.

First we put tag on elephant that is outside the park.

That we can find them in the community, but also we don’t put tag on elephant on the edge of the park.

So we thinking that those elephant on the edge, during the day might be the same elephant going into the community at night.

For the process of collaring, there’s a lot that really goes into it.

Firirst of all, you need to have the government on board and really involved in it as well.

And veterinarians and also the conservation teams.

One thing that I learned that I wasn't aware of is that there is a really careful, meticulous selection process.

The Tanzanian Elephant Foundation, in conjunction with Katie Adamson Conservation Fund, they worked very hard to figure out what are the right herds to collar in order to put those collaring resources into the animals that are going to give us the best data.

We prefer this the second oldest female from the heard because the matriarch sometimes they are old and we assumed that their life span is short.

Elephants by ground are a very dangerous animal to to dart and get them separated from other females or other calves, what ever animals is hit with a dart.

We were trying to find the best target that we can dart the animal, you know.

Especially for the road being bumpy, you know.

And that’s why most of the time we prefer to use the helicopter.

We immobilized a female elephant and it's took about 12 minutes for the drug to react and the animal is down.

There's a lot of work put into being safe, approaching the animals in a way that doesn't spook them and run them off into denser areas of the bush We start the collaring process which usually should be within 15 to 20 minutes without causing more stress or to harm the animal staying with the animal for longer time.

This is a blindfold for elephants.

Like this.

Pull it.

Pull it.

For me, getting to be a part of this collaring effort I really wanted to take advantage of being able to be near a wild elephant, an elephant in it’s purest form.

And test the tissues of the feet and examine the tissues of the feet and see how those feet correlate to the feet that I’ve learned so much about both through research and my work with zoological facilities.

With an elephant, you can actually lose a portion of an ear and they can still thermoregulate, you can lose half of a trunk, they can still function.

You lose a leg or a foot on an elephant and you lose an elephant.

They're so sensitive and they actually hear through their feet, which is a really incredible anatomical process.

After the process of, you know, fitting the the collar to the animal, then we we give another drug which is called the antidote so that the animal, uh, wake up quickly, which takes almost to 2 to 3 minutes so that the animal will start to, to start a new life with the collar.

Elephant, they communicate by, rumbling.

So when the animal wake up, it started rumble, you know, calling others, you know, providing signals to where they are, their fellows are So within that 20 minutes, the animal .. and everything ends well when you hit that timeline.

It’s all about human elephant conflict, the mitigation of this involves a lot of community outreach and a fusion of our cultures together.

and some of that is in sport, some of that is with our women’s groups, it’s with our kids, it’s with art, it’s with collaring elephants.

All that we can do to promote this innitiative here in Tanzania.

bringing a little bit of the KACF and the Colorado love across the world.

Nice come back.

We have been in Tanzania since the 3rd of June And we started in Mwanza, where we met Dr. Judith Flora that we've been working with throughout the whole planning process.

My area of specialization is journalism and mass communication, but my research I focus more on cultural adaptation.

Basically looking at how two different cultures come together and they are able to adapt to each other.

So how many of you guys love doing artwork?

Yeah?

We’ve got an option here that kinda combines all that.. of using colors, pencils, and everythign like that.

When people travel, they travel all the way so that they come and learn.

They don’t come here to transform the place to be their own home country.

So if someone is going to come from US to come to Tanzania, they are ready to explore Tanzanian culture and in that process of exploring Tanzanian culture, basically they undergo a phase called acculturation.

So we got them a laptop, a digital art printer, and a digital art pad so that they can start working on those kinds of things.

I scribbled on the tablet a couple of times and the girl takes over and she’s like, “Yea, I think I got this.” And I was just so excited because, just to see what they’re going to procude out of that is going to be wonderful.

If you if you come here and.. not just with some really incredible memories, but also like we've been talking about, you leave with some connections to a community that you otherwise would have never had the o.. We also visited the Napari women of Mkomazi, to sit down and cook a meal with them.

Are we doing this?

What are we doing?

Where are we going?

So, you know we did everything from dig out the fire pits, to boiling water, cooking the rice, grating the nuts to make oil.

We were there for every aspect of it and the women were definitely excited, if not like adamant that we try everything.

This is how you get the chaff out.

So the chaff will automatically go out.

Don't you see it's going up?

Yes, yes, yes.

It's all about the community and the culture and the conservation, just tying those all together people and animals can’t have one without the other.

Um, you're saving the animals, eventually you're going to be saving the people because they're, they just intertwine.

Oh, thank you.

You're my favorite teacher.

One of the other things we really want to produce out of that experience is a cookbook.

So that people can not only participate in making these meals while they’re there with these women, but they can take something home with them to try and recreate this in their, in their kitchens Where should they go?

Ultimately we would love to make it Crossing Paths where we go all the places that Katie Adamson Conservation Fund goes.

Crossing Paths Nepal, Crossing Paths Vietnam, Crossing Paths Costa Rica.

Eventually people will just come to the Facebook page, the website.

Like... “I crossed paths with this beautiful village.” “I had the moste deliscious pelow.” You know, “The women were awesome.

They treated me great.” “They brought me out and they sang and they danced with me.” And they’re like, “Oh my God, I want to have that experience.” My desire is that if people could come..

I'm not saying that we help them to give them money so that to feed them.

No.

But I'm just saying, if we could help to facilitate the activities that they are doing, make sure that we create publicity for these communities.

It can be in terms of skills.

If someone is talented and is able to come and teach kids to do artwork for a week or on.. we will appreciate it.

Young boys and girls and our mothers need people.

You need me and you to come together and be able to bring our skills so that we can bring whatever they have into the world.

There are just so many avenues and so many new people that we could support.

You cannot get people energized or excited about animals until they see them, until they see them in their environment.

You're working with the communities, You're helping the communities.

You see what their daily life is a little bit about.

You get to spend the day in their shoes We’ve changed their lives and they’ve changed ours by bringing them into their home.

And that can be very vulnerable.

I have found that one of the best things you get .. and you find yourself in a safari vehicle full of strangers and sitting at dinner with the lights flickering because there's not any power with a bunch of strangers, and by the end of the week you leave with your co.. your family having been expanded greatly.

The connections we make...

I always get emotional thinking about it because it's it really is like finding new best friends.

in a week.

And the more we get out there, um the growth is dynamic.

Very thankful for the for the KACF team and the conservation travelers from the US.

They are passionate toward conserving these elephants, you know, and also helping their local communities to get rid of the human elephant conflict, which is amazing things, you know?

I hope that the KACF will be here much longer than myself.

and I hope it continues to to channel that energy and passion around the world.