NEW CAMPAIGN LAUNCH: Save Elephants with Bees

Africa is home to around 415,000 of the largest walking animals on Earth, the African elephants, which represents a dreadful 30% decrease in the last decade.

Between 2014 and 2019, Tanzania has lost 60% of its elephants, leading as a country with the largest poaching threat in Africa by the end of 2015.

Tanzania lost over 85,181 elephants mainly due to poaching to meet to the demand of ivory from Asian countries such as China and Vietnam. The country was then left with only 43,330 elephants out of 109,051 that used to roam in the wild.

Later in late 2015, a new regime took place in Tanzania and president Magufuli took office and promised to end the poaching. He came up with a strong plan to protect all wildlife in the country, and since then, elephant numbers began to slowly increase to 60,000.

Alert for Endangered Wildlife Species (AFeWis) was created in 2016 to protect elephants in all possible ways fighting against human/elephant conflicts. They have put a genius solution in place, which is at the heart of this campaign.

Elephants & Bees

Elephants and bees are not friends, and this is precisely what can save those gentle giants.

Elephants do not care about borders and cross the boundaries of National Parks by breaking down fences into farmers’ lands to feast on their crops like maize, beans, banana plantations and so forth. Angry to loose their source of income but also in danger, farmers want to poison or kill the pachyderms.

AFeWis (Alert for Endangered Wildlife Species) is resolving the human/wildlife conflict between farmers and elephants by installing beehives long the borders of National Parks. This way, when elephants approach the National Park boundaries, the disturbed bees attack and elephants simply turn around as they are afraid of bees. They say elephants remember…and they certainly do, not coming back to these areas.

AFeWis team bringing additional beehives at the National Park's border.

Let’s not forget that bees make honey, and this naturally provides a new source of income to the local communities.

Current project

Since April 2019, AFeWis have built 64 beehive fences to protect two villages and four gateways in and out of Arusha National Park, therefore protecting wild elephants too.

This has already proved to be a success as 50+ elephants that used to destroy agricultural crops have not returned in that particular area.

Future projects

AFeWis is an ambitious organisation and will continue to expand their efforts to other National Parks such as Manyara National Park. For each new project, 100 beehives will be built and installed: Manyara National Park, Burunge wildlife management area and Tarangire National Park.

WHAT ARE WE RAISING MONEY FOR?

Currently, AFeWis needs to install further 36 beehives to fill a gap where elephants cross from Arusha National Park into a village and farmers land.

A single beehive costs £55 (or $70). This includes 3 poles, binding wires, cement and crude black oil for painting the poles.

Can you contribute to buy one or more beehive(s)?

YOUR NAME ON A BEEHIVE

By donating to this project, your name (by default) will appear on a beehive as shown in the example above. I will contact you following your donation however, in case you would like another name in the beehive such as a loved one or a friend if it is a present.

Also, if you travel to Tanzania and book through me as I am a travel agent specialised in African safaris , I will donate a beehive on your behalf. I can then arrange for you to visit the project and see your name of a beehive too.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Your donation on the GoFundMe campaign is deeply appreciated and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generosity.

You can also donate via Paypal, accessible from the charity website’s homepage.

If your birthday is coming up, why not start a birthday fundraiser for Wild & Free - Rehabilitation and Release? They have been very successful over the lockdown period, but Christmas is coming up soon too!

We have beautiful bespoke Elephant merchandise on Wild&Free’s online shop , where 100% of the profit goes to this campaign. There is a large choice of items such as Elephant print, painting, poster, necklace and many more.

I will be adding all offline donations to this campaign to keep you up to date with our fundraising so you can see exactly how the campaign is progressing.

Thank you very much in advance!

Geraldine