Botswana: Living with elephants

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The battle to keep the peace between people and elephants in northern Botswana. The earth’s largest land mammal, the elephant, is an endangered species. Poaching, habitat loss and disease have decimated elephant populations. But not in Botswana, which has the world’s biggest population of elephants. In the north of the country, in the area around the remarkable Okavango Delta (the world’s largest inland delta), elephant numbers are growing and they outnumber people. This can pose serious problems for the human population, particularly local subsistence farmers. A crop raid by elephants can destroy a family’s annual food supply overnight. Elephants also pose a risk to life in their daily commute between their feeding grounds and their water sources. John Murphy travels to the top of the Okavango Delta, to see what efforts are being made to keep both people and elephants safe, and to persuade locals that these giant animals are an asset not a liability. He also explores threats from further afield to this green jewel in the desert, the Okavango Delta, which animals and people alike depend on.

Presenter: John Murphy Producer: Charlotte Ashton Studio Mix: Rod Farquhar Editor: Penny Murphy

(Image: Elephant wading in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Credit: Brytta/Getty)

Transcript

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0:00.0	World Football at the Women's World Cup is the podcast bringing you all the action from the tournament in Australia and New Zealand.
0:07.0	Listen now by searching for World Football from the BBC World Service, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:24.0	Oh wow, there's a whole troop of them going by.
0:29.0	Little babies, big ones, all loads of them.
0:34.0	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This is Assignment in Northern Botswana.
0:46.0	Still coming. And here's another troop.
0:59.0	Wow, Minjita, that was pretty exciting. I mean, there are less than 100 metres away. How many of them do you think they're there?
1:04.0	Yeah, I would say they were close to 150.
1:08.0	Close to 150. Wow. Yeah, you can tell they came in groups.
1:11.0	They came in groups. Yeah, you can see the first group was two mixed breeding heads.
1:15.0	And the second one was two again mixed breeding heads. Then they'd last two, were kind of like three bows in behind.
1:24.0	With their keen sense of smell, the elephants could sniff us out.
1:28.0	So fortunately, they were avoiding us.
1:32.0	Some of them didn't seem very pleased. They had their ears flapping.
1:36.0	And you can tell with their speed, they move whenever they're going to the river.
1:40.0	They're thirsty and they need to go straight and drink some water. So, no stress.
1:45.0	And they don't want to be disturbed by humans like us.
1:48.0	They don't want to be disturbed by anything across the road.
1:52.0	And you can see why, you know, if you're just walking along this road and they suddenly come out without much warning,
1:58.0	it could be quite dangerous.
2:00.0	It could be very, very dangerous because like you'll see with the wet speed they are moving.
2:04.0	They don't even see what's going on. It's like they'll just go, psh, there you go.
	...

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