Reconnecting elephant habitats in Africa takes a major step forward as the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) restores a historic corridor linking protected areas across the Malawi-Zambia border.
Reconnecting elephant habitats in Africa starts with a simple idea. Give elephants safe routes, and human-wildlife conflict eases. In Malawi and Zambia, that idea is now taking shape on the ground, and it offers a working model for reconnecting wildlife habitats in Africa more broadly.
At dawn in Kasungu National Park, elephants move through miombo woodland along paths older than the border itself. For centuries, elephants crossed this landscape freely. Poaching, fences, and growing settlements have since narrowed their world.
In the 1940s, colonial authorities set aside corridors linking Kasungu in Malawi to Lukusuzi in Zambia. Settlements were barred from these strips of land. The system worked, and elephants moved safely between parks for decades.
Independence brought change. Resettlement schemes and population growth spread across the corridors over six decades. Woodland gave way to farms, and the old routes fractured.
By 2015, poaching had cut Kasungu’s elephant population from roughly 1,000 to about 50, a decline of nearly 95%. That year, Malawi’s government asked IFAW for help. IFAW backed new ranger training, intelligence units, and cross-border law enforcement.
The turnaround was dramatic. Poaching in Kasungu nearly stopped, and in 2022, wildlife officials moved 263 elephants from Liwonde National Park to Kasungu. Elephants returned to eastern Zambia for the first time in more than 50 years, a milestone in the broader push to reconnect elephant habitats across Africa.
That comeback brought new challenges. Farmers near the unfenced park boundary began finding their fields trampled and granaries raided on some mornings. About 15,000 people live within key elephant migration routes in this landscape, so close encounters are common.
IFAW’s Room to Roam initiative now works to restore ecological connectivity while protecting livelihoods, an approach central to reconnecting elephant habitats in Africa without sidelining the people who live alongside them. Conservationists have fitted satellite collars to 31 elephant matriarchs, each leading a herd of roughly ten. Trackers alert mobile response teams when herds approach farmland, giving families time to react.
Reconnecting elephant habitats in Africa means protecting people as much as wildlife, with IFAW’s Room to Roam initiative fitting satellite collars to 31 elephant matriarchs and deploying mobile response teams to alert farming communities before herds reach their fields. Photo by Julia Gunther, courtesy of IFAW.
Local volunteers called Primary Response Teams sound the alarm when collared elephants near villages. Rapid Response Units then use firecrackers or warning shots to guide elephants back toward the park. Community members also light fires or beat drums to scare elephants away safely.
Simple technology is making a real difference too. Solar-powered electric fencing, strung between trees, creates protected zones around vulnerable fields. Sturdy cement granaries, already used successfully in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, keep stored grain safe from hungry elephants.
Schools have joined the effort as well. At one school in Zambia’s Lumezi district, staff hold weekly safety talks for around 1,700 students. Warning signs and clear guidance help children avoid dangerous encounters on their way home.
Attitudes are shifting slowly but steadily. Farmers who once wanted retaliation against crop-raiding elephants are learning to see coexistence as achievable. One community volunteer describes himself as a mediator between people and animals, a role that barely existed before.
The stakes reach far beyond these two countries. Roughly 76% of Africa’s elephants live in habitats that cross national borders, according to IFAW research on the Malawi-Zambia landscape. Reconnecting elephant habitats in Africa, one corridor at a time, may be essential to the species’ survival across the continent.
Kasungu’s rangers, once focused only on stopping poachers, now also help farmers protect their crops. Zambian and Malawian officials coordinate across the border, catching wildlife traffickers who once slipped through the gap between jurisdictions. This partnership shows what transboundary conservation can achieve.
Similar community-driven models are proving their worth elsewhere too. A decade of forest conservation gains in Sumatra shows how involving local residents in habitat protection can cut deforestation while safeguarding elephants and other wildlife, a lesson that applies just as well to reconnecting elephant habitats in Africa.
The work is far from finished. Fences need funding, granaries need to be built, and trust between people and elephants takes time to grow. Every corridor restored, though, is a step toward a landscape where both can thrive.
Elephants in Kasungu keep walking the same paths their ancestors used long before any border existed. Whether those paths stay open now depends on the people working, corridor by corridor, to keep them clear.
