The Soft Foot Alliance logo shows the mammalian species that come into conflict locally:
- Honey Badgers
- Spotted Hyenas
- Elephants and
At the same time, we must co-exist on the land we share. We are all companions and we, as humans, must be innovative in finding ways to not only survive, but thrive together.
Finding solutions to the challenges of the co-existence is the Soft Foot Alliance’s primary goal.
The honey badger is a little spoken about species that conflicts directly with people over their poultry mainly but also those that keep bees. It is nocturnal and sports a set of very long claws that it uses to dig under fences and steal chickens. They can climb well and have a ferocious reputation when cornered
The spotted hyena accounts for as much livestock lost as lions. They tend to live amongst people in the communal lands rather than ‘raid’ and return to the protected areas like lions. They don’t tend to be dangerous to people in this area and as such people seem to accept their losses albeit bitterly
Baboons are by far the most challenging species in terms of conflict with subsistence farmers because they are smart, have amazing eyesight and can quickly learn your techniques. Baboon will raid crop fields and eat all your food whilst deploying decoys and other advanced strategies when dealing with people.
Lions tend to spend the day in the protected area and “come out” at night to kill livestock in poor stockades. Often, livestock are grazed in the protected areas during the day and lions have learnt that the sound of cow-bells means dinner. Adequate herding of livestock during the day and strong stockades at night can reduce the losses to lion by huge percentages
Elephant are the most widely spoken about source of conflict because they are very large, sometimes dangerous and can do a lot of damage to a field in a single night. They are very intelligent, but much success can be made with adaptive mitigation methods including chilli bombs and fences and bee-hive fences.
The Soft Foot Alliance Trust is delighted that Brent’s work on behalf of lions has been recognised; in 2016 he received a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award. Similarly, it is very encouraging for a new organisation to receive such fantastic support, in 2017 the organisation was excited to receive a Lush Doing Prize.