Somewhere beyond the sea, a train has knocked down another elephant. It seems remote, and we can wrongly presume that this will only ever be a problem of mega-populations like India, but as development waves ripple across Kenya, we must plan for elephants and the areas that house our rich wildlife on a landscape level.

Services, amenities and infrastructure are coming to communities for the first time. This also means that settlements are springing up in unlikely areas, and burgeoning populations are grappling with human elephant conflict like never before. With our long standing dataset, we are able to map through our Human Footprint Project how development is progressing, and importantly, by overlaying our maps over time with elephant movement data, we are able to advise local government, policy makers and community members where and where not to settle.

Of course, in some areas, we are almost too late. Settlements, farms and roads have encroached and obliterated elephant migration routes of old, cutting off wildlife from the rest of their gene pool, and putting both man and beast in jeopardy if they dare cross. At this point, STE’s tracking data is extremely handy for the advice and building of ecological corridors that cut across roads and rails, connecting what was once broken.