Conflict with wildlife over water resources
BridgIT Water believes it is incumbent on humans to contribute to conserving our world's unique wildlife. However, we have encountered an increasing need to work with communities to find ways to minimise dangerous conflict between humans and wild animals competing for common water sources, specifically in terms of our African projects.
Chimpanzee Conservation in Uganda
BridgIT partners with the Bulindi Chimpanzee & Community Project (BCCP), a grassroots organisation in the Hoima District of western Uganda, to address urgent threats to wild chimpanzees living in unprotected habitats alongside rural farmers.
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This project has two main objectives- humans and chimpanzees are both affected. First, the sharing of water sources by human populations and chimpanzee poses a threat to both chimpanzees; c. 300 chimpanzees survive in small, unprotected forest fragments owned by village households and primarily children who have to encounter them to access the water source.
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This project allows villagers access to a safe water supply without exposure to preventable water-borne diseases such as dysentery, cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea while collecting unsafe, contaminated water from forest streams where they risk potentially dangerous encounters with the chimpanzees but also helps to conserve the chimpanzee populations.
The project aims to enable sustainable human-chimpanzee coexistence outside protected areas for the region's villages.
Elephant Conservation in Malawi
​This project will provide quality drinking water in water scarcity communities surrounding Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in Malawi. It aims to build their awareness and capacity to understand the importance of protecting wildlife, particularly elephants and reducing wildlife trafficking.
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In this project, the provision of water wells will be a gift to the Nkhotakota Wildlife reserve communities in return for their wildlife conservation efforts. There has never been a project around the reserve to improve communities' participation, and this project will fill the knowledge gap currently seen among communities.
This project will have a water supply component to the adjacent communities. Only 63% of the population have access to potable water, 37% of the boreholes in the area are not functioning, and 53% live below the poverty line [Nkhotakota District Council Investment Plan].
Area: Hoima District, Uganda
Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, Malawi
Solution: Drilled borewells and refurbish existing boreholes equipped with hand pumps