PAMS Grant

Empowers Africa is excited to announce a USD 5,000 grant to the PAMS Foundation, an incredible team of conservationists working on-the-ground to save Tanzania’s wildlife. Since their inception in 2006, PAMS has played an extremely critical role in turning around Tanzania’s elephant poaching crisis. Their mission is to protect wildlife and habitats though measures that benefit both nature and local communities.
The grant will be in support of funding an anti-poaching camp in the Ruvuma region. Primarily community-owned land, Ruvuma supports approximately 280,000 people. Human-elephant conflict is a serious threat; when elephants destroy farmers’ crop fields, they are killed in retaliation. This region also witnesses a high volume of poaching, whether it be via gunshot or poisoning. The project’s goal is to control the poaching crisis in the Ruvuma, to learn more about the seasonal movement of elephants in the area, manage human-elephant conflict, and help develop income-generating activities for conservation and communities. As part of this project, they have built 3 kilometers of “chili fences” to prevent elephants from raiding crop fields, which has resulted in a 100 percent success rate in protecting farmers’ crops. Since 2012, The Project has employed 200 game scouts to perform daily patrols, and together have arrested several poaching, recovered ivory, illegal timber, snares, poisons, and weapons.