WILDAID
Business design for elephant conservation
The “Smelly”
Elephant Repellent
Bringing business and conservation together for the African Elephant.
Conservation and design rarely crossed paths in the past, which is why I founded Design for Wildlife. In partnership with WildAid we were able to produce one of the world’s first case studies of human-centered design in wildlife conservation, in an effort to protect the African elephant.
Farmers in Uganda and across the African continent struggle to co-exist with elephants. As human populations overlap more and more with their territory, elephants raid farmers’ crops, which often leads to the retaliatory killing of the animals. Using design research, live prototyping and business design, we created a market-based strategy for the production and distribution of a smelly elephant repellent–a product made to stop elephants from destroying crops—and it’s now being scaled across the region.
In partnership with WildAid
What is it?
The smelly elephant repellent is an organic product made from ingredients commonly found across most of Africa. It is a solution to elephant crop raiding that is easy to implement and keeps elephants away from crops without putting human lives in danger.
Trials between 2017 and 2019 have shown an 80% reduction in crop raiding on participating farms. This has led to improved harvest yields, improved tolerance of elephants, and better attitudes towards conservation.
Although it was an excellent product it was missing a path to scale.
Our goal was to make the elephant repellent available to all of those who could benefit from it, without relying on ongoing grants and donations. We needed to create an economically-sustainable service delivery model.
Why This Matters
Elephants love eating maize because it’s sweet, juicy and tastier than their usual sources of food. Even if elephants have access to their natural sources of food, they will favor the sweet flavor of maize. However, this preference puts them, and people, in grave danger as elephants raid maize fields causing the destruction of farmers livelihoods, and at times, even causing injury or death.
Human-wildlife conflict is the SECOND largest threat to endangered species in the world, after habitat destruction.
This is a bigger threat to elephants than poaching.
Featured Story
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Okello
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Featured Story * Okello *
Meet Okello
He is the owner of 4 acres of land that he uses to farm maize, cassava and ground nuts.
When his crops are almost ready to harvest, he sets off every night armed with slingshots, torches and noise makers to protect his livelihood from hungry elephants.
When elephants eat a farmers’ crop they often destroy a families’ livelihood for the entire year. Many farmers are unable to pay for their children’s school fees, business expenses for improved crop yields and other basic living expenses like food or healthcare.
Okello’s experience is not unique or uncommon with farmers across Africa and Asia.
Human-elephant conflict happens everywhere where farmers and elephants coexist and no solution has ever been able to scale across all elephant habitats before.
Highlights from the field
Design Research
Live Prototyping
Pre Pilot Testing
The new distribution model
The new distribution model focuses on making the smelly elephant repellent available to all those who need it across elephant conflict regions.
Providing an economically sustainable distribution model that saves millions of US dollars in necessary fundraising.
Increasing resilience to elephant crop-raiding, improving household income and achieving better living standards.
Representing new direct sources of income for each local economy where the elephant repellent product is rolled out.
Being a conservation solution created in Uganda, by Uganda, for Africa (with foreign support for growth).
Ultimately, increasing tolerance of elephants and improving attitudes towards conservation overall.
”Mariana provides an essential perspective on people-centric design for wildlife conservation. Our experience working with her has been a game-changer as she has led a comprehensive process revealing critical insights needed for our success, everything from market analysis to product testing to business planning with an impressive team of like-minded specialists.”
— John Baker, Chief Program Officer, WildAid