The African savannah elephant Loxodonta africana is the largest land animal. Although it inhabits 37 countries across Africa, it is categorized as Endangered by the IUCN Red List, with a decreasing population trend (Gobush et al., Reference Gobush, Edwards, Balfour, Wittemyer, Maisels and Taylor2022). Elephants are mixed grazer-browser herbivores that feed on a wide range of plant species, including grasses, sedges, shrubs and trees, depending on seasonal availabilities. They are ecosystem engineers that clear forests, disperse seeds across rangelands and uncover watering holes in dry riverbeds that other animals are then able to access, benefiting both wild ungulates and livestock (Western & Mose, Reference Western and Mose2023). Elephants are cathemeral but appear to forage more at night in areas with greater human presence (Smit et al., Reference Smit, Searle, Buchanan-Smith, Strampelli, Mkuburo and Kakengi2023). They live in complex social groups, including family units led by senior matriarchs responsible for group movements, with males breaking away as they approach sexual maturity.

One of the largest populations of elephants in northern Tanzania is located in the Tarangire ecosystem. Although ivory poaching was prevalent locally in the 1970s and 1980s, the international ban on commercial ivory trade in 1989 reduced global demand. The population of elephants in the Tarangire ecosystem has been growing rapidly since through concerted conservation efforts: from 2,300 in 1995 to 4,200 in 2014, and to > 5,000 in 2020 when the most recent aerial count was undertaken (Foley & Foley, Reference Foley, Foley, Kiffner, Bond and Lee2022). The increasing elephant population, despite a decreasing trend across Africa overall, has led to frequent human–elephant interactions, with significant impacts on people’s lived experiences of psychosocial and material well-being (Raycraft et al., Reference Raycraft, Tanner and Ole2024). Such encounters often take the forms of foraging in crops and destruction of property, exacerbated by fragmentation of connected habitats around Tarangire National Park into farmlands and human settlements. A particularly pressing issue affecting people’s physical safety is elephant attacks on people, which typically occur when elephants perceive people to be a threat. Elephant attacks often result in severe injuries or causalities and can lead to decreasing tolerance for wildlife and retaliatory measures that detrimentally affect elephant populations. Such considerations underscore the importance of context-specific research on the drivers of these negative interactions.

We carried out a rapid assessment of elephant attacks on people in four member villages of Makame Wildlife Management Area in the south-east of the Tarangire ecosystem. Our study was conceived in response to local reports of frequent attacks by elephants in the area, which prompted the Member of Parliament of Kiteto District to seek assistance from Honeyguide, a community-based conservation organization, to assess the situation and provide recommendations to the government based on their findings. Honeyguide is a grassroots NGO based in Arusha, Tanzania, which specializes in developing livelihood-oriented models of wildlife conservation and reducing negative human–wildlife interactions through locally tailored mitigation strategies. Lemuta Meng’oru, a field officer with Honeyguide, was tasked with carrying out the assessment and was joined by Justin Raycraft, an environmental anthropologist with an independent research programme on human–wildlife coexistence in the Tarangire ecosystem, and field research assistant Edwin Maingo Ole. The group was hosted and supported locally by Mitiaki Lokoiyo, a representative of Makame Wildlife Management Area, and follow-up fieldwork to triangulate observations was carried out by Peadar Brehony, the director of Sustain East Africa, a research organization devoted to understanding and addressing pressing social-environmental issues.

Makame Wildlife Management Area is in the Kiteto District of Tanzania’s Manyara Region (Fig. 1). It is the largest Wildlife Management Area in Tanzania, spanning 3,719 km². Wildlife Management Areas are Tanzania’s version of community-based conservancies, which involve member villages zoning portions of village land for wildlife habitat, consumptive wildlife uses, tourism and local livelihoods. They are managed collectively by an authorized association of community representatives. Makame’s climate is semi-arid, receiving on average 500–750 mm of rainfall annually. It supports > 40 species of large mammals, many of which move outside Tarangire National Park in the wet season following bimodal rainfall patterns (Bond et al., Reference Bond, Lee, Kiffner, Kiffner, Bond and Lee2022). The area comprises five member villages (Makame, Irkiushiobor, Ndedo, Ngabolo and Katikati) with a total human population of c. 16,500 (Baker et al., Reference Baker, Anderson, Kiffner, Kiffner, Bond and Lee2022). It is inhabited primarily by Kisongo Maasai pastoralists who value shared access to rangelands and collective institutions for managing seasonal pastures, although the Maasai have diversified their economies over the past 40 years to include crop cultivation (maize and beans), participation in wage labour, and other business ventures. The primary livelihood strategy of the community is mobile livestock herding (cattle, goats and sheep), and local pastoralists are permitted to graze their livestock inside the area in accordance with a seasonal zoning scheme. Makame generates revenue through tourist trophy hunting, which partially covers its operational costs. Three hunting blocks within the area are leased to private companies that host international tourist hunters targeting big game (including elephant, lion Panthera leo, leopard Panthera pardus and African buffalo Syncerus caffer) pursuant to national species quotas and laws. Makame also partners with Carbon Tanzania to implement a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation monitoring program based on a verified carbon standard to quantify emission reductions from avoided deforestation and forest degradation. Revenues from these management initiatives are shared with the government and member villages in accordance with national policy.

Fig. 1

The study villages in Makame Wildlife Management Area, Tanzania. Development areas refer to parts of villages designated for settlements, shops, schools, hospitals and offices. The conservation and grazing area includes land set aside for wildlife habitat, trophy hunting blocks, livestock grazing and carbon sequestration.

During 27–29 April 2025, members of the research team visited Makame to evaluate the situation. We conducted one focus group discussion with local leaders and community members in each of the four study villages: Makame (with seven people), Katikati (nine), Irkiushiobor (seven) and Ngabolo (five). Discussions focused on people’s lived experiences of elephant attacks, including perceived drivers, notable characteristics and recommendations for mitigation. In Maasai society, group discussions are a culturally normative way to approach topics affecting the well-being of communities. These insights were triangulated with key stakeholder interviews with members of the Wildlife Management Area’s governance board to record dates and times of incidents, victim demographics and locations of attacks.

Across the study villages, people consistently expressed that they lacked knowledge about elephant behaviour and tools necessary for mitigating attacks, although some community representatives were well-informed about the issue. In total, four people were killed by elephants over the previous 5 years, and two others were critically injured. Numerous other attacks resulting in less severe injuries occurred over the previous 5 years, including seven incidents in Irkiushiobor during 2022–2025 that were not systematically recorded. Most severe attacks occurred in Makame village, and one lethal attack took place in Ngabolo. Notably, all victims were men, highlighting the potentially gendered dimensions of human–elephant interactions in this context. Lethal attacks on people occurred exclusively at night, during both the wet (February–May; November–December) and dry (June–October; January) seasons. Most attacks occurred while victims were traveling on roads by motorbike, people’s primary mode of motorized transportation in the study area. This finding is somewhat distinct from patterns in other parts of the Tarangire ecosystem. In Randilen Wildlife Management Area, for instance, most attacks seem to occur while people are defending crops on their farms (Raycraft, Reference Raycraft2023). Encroachment of vegetation on the roads in Makame Wildlife Management Area makes it challenging to see elephants coming, and people reported that elephants seemed agitated by the sound of motorbikes. Riding motorcycles at night in Makame is a social phenomenon that has emerged in the past 15 years and could be disrupting historical patterns of elephant adaptation to human presence. Kioko et al. (Reference Kioko, Moore, Moshofsky, Nonnamaker, Ebanietti, Thompson, Kiffner, Kiffner, Bond and Lee2022), for instance, found that elephants in the Tarangire ecosystem reacted more strongly to audio playbacks of human-related sounds than to those of wildlife or livestock.

Based on our discussions with village representatives, it is clear that broader dialogue on this issue that integrates the traditional ecological knowledge of local community members with research on elephant behavioural ecology is needed to foster lasting coexistence. For now, we recommend that community members (1) avoid traveling by motorbike between villages at night if possible, and (2) carry out locally organized initiatives supported by revenues from Makame Wildlife Management Area to clear vegetation (excluding free-standing trees) that has encroached on roads and makes it difficult to see approaching elephants. We suggest exercising caution to ensure labourers are not exposed to increased risk of snake bites while clearing bush around roads. We advise the government to (1) establish a local wildlife authority office for community members to report wildlife attacks (at present in Tanzania, wildlife authority offices are located in major towns and cities, making travel time-consuming from remote areas where human–wildlife interactions are more frequent), (2) respond swiftly to community reports about problem animals, and (3) increase the consolation payments for households that have had someone killed or permanently injured by elephants. Currently, Makame Wildlife Management Area is supplementing government compensation in an attempt to lessen economic burdens on those affected. Slow government responses are generally a result of limited capacity in rural areas and a lack of institutional synergy across the arms of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism for dealing with problematic human–wildlife interactions. We further recommend creating a formal human–wildlife interaction task force to consistently address wildlife attacks on people. We suggest that civil society organizations (1) help obtain human–elephant conflict reduction toolkits for villages (these have proven to be effective deterrents elsewhere in the Tarangire ecosystem), and (2) leverage traditional and scientific ecological knowledge to provide training, outreach and education to enhance local understandings of elephant behaviour and mitigate risks of future attacks, a recommendation that aligns with other research on community strategies for promoting human–elephant coexistence in southern Tanzania (Montero-Botey et al., Reference Montero-Botey, Soliño, Perea and Martínez-Jauregui2021).

Finally, we highlight the need for further research on elephant behavioural ecology to understand (1) whether elephant attacks on people are potentially increasing because of improved protection measures in the Tarangire ecosystem (i.e. elephant population growth) or as a result of habitat loss outside Makame Wildlife Management Area (i.e. land-use change and agricultural development), and (2) whether there are particular environmental factors (e.g. fluctuations in surface water availability) that are affecting the frequency of elephant attacks.

The findings from this rapid assessment were disseminated to Honeyguide staff and community members by Lemuta Meng’oru in May 2025. At the community’s request, Honeyguide provided human–elephant conflict reduction toolkits (chilli bombs) and trained people to use them effectively and safely to deter elephants. Recommendations were also returned to the government, though policy implementation has been slowed by national elections in October 2025.