We partnered with the Zambezi Elephant Fund to establish a community-led beekeeping project within one of the five villages in the Gache-Gache community, as a pilot project for potential expansion into four other nearby villages. Gache-Gache is a collection of five rural villages of around 3,000 people in total, located in the Zambezi Valley near Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe. They are one of the few communities located within a wildlife area. This inevitable results in high human-wildlife conflict, in particular crop-raiding by elephants.

The aim of the project is to mitigate human-elephant conflict, and simultaneously provide economic benefit to community members through the sale of honey. The project forms part of a larger, ongoing human-wildlife conflict mitigation project underway in the Gache-Gache community, by using beehive fences to deter elephants from raiding crops. This technique has been used in other countries with high rates of success, as it is well known that elephants do not like the sound of bees. The project will decrease conflict, and increase coexistence between humans and elephants.

To date we have supported the project with USD3,250 for stage one implementation and have promised further funding in future if the project shows success.