Room to Roam is an ambitious and urgent vision for Africa’s surviving savannah elephants and the human communities with which they share the land and its resources.
Backed by 20 years of science and engagement with local communities, Room to Roam is securing and connecting habitats, creating safe passages for wildlife to travel freely through their home ranges in East and southern Africa. The positive outcomes of this far-reaching initiative will be greater biodiversity, natural resilience to climate change, and a future where animals and people can coexist and thrive.
Because of the critical role elephants play as ecosystem engineers, protecting them and the landscapes in which they roam indirectly protects the other wildlife and plants sharing their habitats and, ultimately, helps to mitigate climate change.
Protecting wildlife and healthy ecosystems is critical for the planet’s health. Robust and resilient biodiversity holds immense potential to provide essential life support services for people and animals and slow the effects of climate change.
To thrive, wild animals need safe routes to move freely through countries, over borders, and at a distance from humans. They need access to healthy habitats for food, water, and natural space to stabilise and succeed. Connecting habitats is critical. When habitats are connected and wild animals can roam freely across their landscapes, populations become resilient to changes in their environments and extreme climatic variations, which ultimately buffers species against the threat of extinction. Likewise, communities become more resilient.
Room to Roam’s four thematic pillars offer myriad solutions to protect elephants and other wildlife across East and southern Africa.
Based on more than 20 years of science, Room to Roam aims to maintain persistent elephant populations.
Room to Roam endeavours to build climate-resilient landscapes in East and southern Africa.
At its core, Room to Roam embraces community involvement as the key to conservation success.
IFAW works with elephant nurseries that rescue and rehabilitate orphaned elephant calves, giving them each a second chance at life in the wild.
Every problem has a solution, every solution needs support.
The problems we face are urgent, complicated, and resistant to change. Real solutions demand creativity, hard work, and involvement from people like you.
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