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Across Botswana’s dry landscapes, water has always determined movement. Now, scientists say where water is placed, and how it is managed, is quietly reshaping the country’s wildlife patterns with elephants at the centre of a growing ecological and human challenge.

At the heart of this shift is the increasing and often unregulated provision of artificial water points across the country. What may appear to be a simple act of drilling boreholes is, in fact, altering natural ecosystems in profound ways, drawing elephants into areas where they were historically absent and setting the stage for rising human-wildlife conflict.

This emerging finding is being closely examined by Professor Emily Bennitt, a large herbivore ecologist at the Okavango Research Institute (ORI), whose work spans wildlife ecology, predator dynamics and applied conservation in the Okavango Delta and beyond. Since joining ORI in 2014, her research has increasingly focused on understanding why elephants are moving into new landscapes and what that means for ecosystems and communities.

Her findings point to a clear but complex driver: elephants follow water. As boreholes and artificial water sources multiply across Botswana, many of them poorly regulated or not formally registered, they create new pathways for elephant movement. In effect, landscapes that were once naturally unsuitable for elephants are being transformed into accessible habitats.

“You now have water points scattered across the landscape,” she explains. “Elephants move towards them, even into areas where they did not exist before.”

The consequences are already visible. In places such as the Central Kalahari and Khutse Game Reserve, elephants are increasingly present despite not being part of the historical ecological balance in those systems. Around newly established water points, vegetation is stripped, habitats are degraded and pressure on fragile ecosystems intensifies.

However, the story does not end there. As elephants move, conflict follows. Communities that once had minimal interaction with elephants are now encountering them more frequently - in fields, grazing lands and near settlements. Crops are destroyed, infrastructure is damaged and the risk to human life increases.

Botswana’s conservation success has, in many ways, amplified the challenge. With an estimated 150,000 elephants, the country hosts the largest population of these animals globally. While this is a point of pride, it also places immense pressure on land, water and people. For Professor Bennitt, the concern is not only about numbers but about ecological balance. She points to worrying signs including the decline of fruit trees and iconic species such as baobabs as well as reduced regeneration of large trees that play a critical role in regulating salt levels in the Delta. If these trees are not replaced, the long-term risk is that water systems themselves could change, potentially becoming more saline and less supportive of biodiversity.

“Healthy ecosystems are essential,” she notes. “They support tourism but they also provide critical services to communities. If those systems begin to fail, the consequences are far-reaching.”

Tourism remains one of Botswana’s key economic pillars, heavily reliant on wildlife and intact ecosystems. Any disruption to this balance, whether through habitat degradation or species displacement, has direct implications for the country’s economy and global conservation reputation.

Yet solutions are far from straightforward. Efforts to control elephant populations through culling are often debated but remain costly, controversial and difficult to implement at the scale required. Contraception, while theoretically viable, demands repeated treatment of a large proportion of animals, an impractical undertaking given Botswana’s vast elephant population.

Other interventions, such as fencing, are limited by the country’s open landscapes and migratory wildlife patterns. Even attempts to manipulate water distribution come with uncertainty. One proposal in the Okavango Panhandle, backed by international funding, is exploring whether providing alternative water sources away from high-conflict zones can redirect elephant movement. The idea is to draw elephants away from riverine areas and human settlements while monitoring impacts on livestock, predators, vegetation and disease over several years.

“It is about testing ideas with communities and learning from the outcomes,” Professor Bennitt explains, emphasising the importance of participatory approaches that involve those most affected.

Fire management presents another layer of complexity. Frequent burning, often driven by human activity, affects vegetation, wildlife habitats and water quality, with ash flowing into river systems and damaging sensitive ecosystems.

Compounding these challenges is a less visible but equally critical issue: data. According to Professor Bennitt, much of the ecological data collected in Botswana is fragmented, poorly managed or inaccessible, often stored on individual devices rather than shared platforms. This limits its usefulness for research, planning and policymaking.

For communities living alongside wildlife, however, the issue is immediate. Human-elephant conflict is no longer confined to traditional hotspots. It is expanding into new areas, driven in part by changes in how water is distributed across the landscape.

As Botswana navigates this complex terrain, one lesson is becoming clear: interventions in nature, however well-intentioned, can have far-reaching and unintended consequences. In the case of artificial water provision, what was meant to support life may now be reshaping it in ways that demand urgent attention.

For researchers such as Professor Bennitt, the challenge ahead lies in finding solutions that restore balance to ensure that both people and elephants can share the landscape without tipping the scales of one of Africa’s most iconic ecosystems.