Payment scheme in Botswana pays communities to coexist with wildlife.
Conservation nonprofit Wild Impact and safari company &Beyond began paying two villages near Botswana's Okavango Delta for camera-trap photographs of wild animals, rewarding residents for living alongside wildlife.
Two rural communities on the edge of Botswana's Okavango Delta are being paid for living alongside wildlife. Residents installed cameras around their villages and earn money from photographs of animals such as elephants and lions, which can raid vegetable gardens or kill livestock.
The payments are part of the Harmony with Wildlife program, run by Wild Impact and &Beyond together with the villages of Gogomoga and Tsutsubega. Each village has fewer than 500 residents and no paved roads, schools, shops or electricity. The wider Okavango Delta is home to elephants, hippos and large predators, along with about 130,000 people, including Indigenous San communities.
The idea grew from earlier work. In April 2024, community rangers began helping residents document damage caused by wild animals so they could claim compensation from Botswana's wildlife department. That led to the use of camera traps to show when and where large mammals move. Wild Impact CEO Andrew Venter told Mongabay the communities were "remarkably tolerant" of wildlife, even though elephants eat crops and damage water boreholes. After two years of reviewing footage, he said, the organization decided the communities' role in conservation deserved recognition.
Rangers check the cameras weekly and download the photographs. Payments vary by species, and elephant sightings earn the most. Every three months, Wild Impact deposits the money into an account held in the communities' names and managed through the local council, and villagers decide together how to spend it.
So far this year the program has paid 57,600 Botswana pula (around $4,175), mostly for sightings of elephants and spotted hyenas. Cameras also recorded leopards and African wildcats. Venter said the amounts are modest on purpose, because Wild Impact pays them itself instead of relying on donors whose support may not last. Skipper Mareja, the group's regional manager for Southern Africa landscapes, said payments for the first two quarters of 2026 had reached the accounts and residents had met to discuss how to use them.
Dirk Cilliers, a conservation planning professor at South Africa's North-West University who is not involved in the project, welcomed the scheme. "If we expect these communities to accommodate wildlife, there needs to be some tangible benefit for them which this programme offers," he told Mongabay by email.
At a Glance
- The program has paid 57,600 Botswana pula (around $4,175) this year for camera-trap sightings, mostly elephants and spotted hyenas.
- Gogomoga and Tsutsubega each have fewer than 500 residents and no paved roads, schools, shops or electricity.
- Rangers began helping residents document wildlife damage in April 2024, which led to the camera-trap idea.
- Wild Impact pays into community-named accounts every three months, managed through the local council.
Sources
This brief was written by Brightside Report from the reporting linked above. Spot an error? Request a correction.