The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust continues to support local communities and schools bordering Tsavo East National Park. This support comes in many forms including a daily school lunch program, which was established in 2022. Due to national school holidays this lunch program took place during May and June only.

In communities bordering Kenya’s National Parks, children grow up alongside wildlife, but they have few opportunities to learn about the natural world that surrounds them. The SWT’s School Conservation Trips offer children an opportunity to enjoy their National Parks and interact with wildlife and natural habitats, whilst learning about flora and fauna and the importance of coexisting and protecting their natural heritage.

During the month of June, the SWT Community Outreach Team led 25 School Trips to Tsavo West National Park and 10 to Tsavo East National Park. During these exciting and fun-filled days out, 300 local schoolchildren toured Tsavo East and visited the orphaned elephants at our Voi Reintegration Unit. These visits were a highlight of the trips: The children got the opportunity to speak with the Keepers and learn about the SWT's work to rescue, raise, and rewild orphaned elephants. Importantly, they also learn how elephants and other wild creatures come to be orphaned and how everyone can work together to prevent it from happening.

Elephant-beehive fences are an innovative, sustainable and natural deterrent for elephant incursions — elephants have a natural aversion to bees — and have proved especially successful on farms bordering protected areas. The project offers a wealth of benefits to farmers through improved pollination of crops and other plants, farm protection against elephants, and income from the sale of the honey they harvest, whilst elephants receive protection in return.

We launched our beehive fence project in collaboration with communities bordering Tsavo East National Park in 2014 as a sustainable, non-aggressive method to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. Over the years, we have installed 144 hives on community farms that were historically targeted by crop-raiding elephants. We also have 78 beehives in the Kibwezi Forest and on Tsavo Farm, along with 10 catcher boxes in the Kibwezi Forest.

In 2021, we established a women’s beekeeping group in the Kibwezi Forest. This program further connects local communities with conservation initiatives and provides valuable employment opportunities. In May, the Community Outreach Team focused on beekeeping efforts, inspecting and cleaning the hives, which was much appreciated by both bees and farmers.