{
  "id": 17964497,
  "title": "Payment scheme in Botswana pays communities to coexist with wildlife",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/03/payment-scheme-in-botswana-pays-communities-to-coexist-with-wildlife",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-11-03T12:25:12.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Mongabay",
    "slug": "mongabay",
    "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/11/payment-scheme-in-botswana-pays-communities-to-coexist-with-wildlife/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A novel payments scheme is rewarding two rural communities residing near Botswana's Okavango Delta for cohabiting with wildlife. These residents have installed cameras around their villages, earning money from photographs of elephants, lions, and other wild animals that might intrude on vegetable gardens or claim livestock. The scheme is a part of the Harmony with Wildlife initiative, managed by conservation nonprofit Wild Impact and safari company &Beyond in collaboration with Gogomoga and Tsutsubega, two remote villages with a population of less than 500 individuals each and lacking paved roads, schools, shops, or electricity. The Okavango Delta is inhabited by elephants, hippos, and large predators, as well as around 130,000 people, including the Indigenous San communities.\n\nWild Impact's CEO Andrew Venter informed Mongabay in a video call that wildlife frequently enters villages. Elephants, for instance, consume crops and damage water boreholes, necessitating heavy fencing; however, the communities exhibit \"remarkable tolerance\" towards wildlife, according to Venter. In April 2024, rangers from the area's communities began assisting residents in documenting damage caused by wild animals so they could claim compensation for their losses from Botswana's wildlife department. This led to the idea of setting up camera traps to identify when and where elephants and other large mammals roam.\n\nSubsequently, the communities collaborated jointly with Wild Impact to deploy cameras in a manner that did not infringe upon people's privacy. After two years of reviewing footage of wild animals traversing the villages, Wild Impact acknowledged the community's role in conservation and promoted coexistence.",
  "summary": "A new payments scheme rewards two rural communities on the edge of Botswana’s Okavango Delta for living alongside wildlife. Residents have installed cameras around their villages and earn money from photographs of elephants, lions and other wild animals that might raid vegetable gardens or kill livestock. The scheme is part of the Harmony with Wildlife […]",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}