"The goal of this project is to safeguard the future of elephants in the NCA (Ngorongoro Conservation Area) through applied research".

At a local scale, i.e. the NCA alone; little research work has been conducted to understand the long-term status and dynamics of the elephant population, specifically the current elephant population size, distribution, movement pattern, HEC (Human Elephant Conflicts) and potential threats are poorly understood. 

Under such scant knowledge, it is not possible to design informed long term conservation and management of species at a local scale and thus the urgency and importance of this study. Various ecological as well as anthropological changes are taking place in NCA necessitating a need to establish a continuous elephant population monitoring. 

Moreover, increasing levels of human population and agricultural activities on the surrounding areas create hard edge effects that magnify and intensify HEC in the end, hence calling for community to become an integral part of species conservation strategies. 

To date little has been done to address such issues. Failure to act now may jeopardize the good conservation effort done not only by the NCA management but also by other conservation stake holders within and outside the country.