The Giants of Ruaha

The Great Ruaha River was once the lifeblood of southern Tanzania's largest ecosystem. It sustained one of Africa's densest elephant populations and the farming communities that lined its banks. By the time I arrived in 2011, the river ran dry for six months of the year.

The elephants had not changed their behavior. The farmers had not changed theirs. But the water that once mediated their coexistence had vanished — diverted upstream for rice irrigation, diminished by changing rainfall patterns, and mismanaged by competing government agencies.

I spent a season documenting crop-raiding incidents and mapping elephant movement corridors through farming areas. The data told a clear story: conflict was concentrated at water points during the dry season, when elephants and people converged on the same shrinking resource.

But the data alone was insufficient. The farmers I interviewed did not need a scientist to tell them that elephants were eating their crops. They needed someone to listen to their frustration, acknowledge their losses, and work toward solutions that did not require them to choose between their livelihoods and the elephants they had lived alongside for generations.

Conservation without justice is just another form of displacement — and displacement, I learned in Ruaha, is what happens when we forget that people are part of the ecosystem too.