Dr Loki Osborn

Loki Osborn has been researching the ecology of crop-raiding elephants for over thirty years, focusing on the use of innovative community-based conflict mitigation techniques to deter elephants from agricultural areas. He holds a PhD from the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.

He currently runs Connected Conservation, a consultancy organization that assists communities, NGOs, and governments to develop practical mitigation solutions for wildlife in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. Together with a team of local and international scientists, Osborn runs a field project in the Victoria Falls area of Zimbabwe that studies methods to modify elephant behavior.

In 2019, he partnered with colleagues to develop the first ‘elephant aware’ brewery in Maun, Botswana. The Okavango Craft Brewery makes beer from millet grown by farmers who have relocated their fields from elephant movement corridors.

Osborn heads up IUCN’s African Elephant Specialist Group Conflict Taskforce and is a board member of two elephant-focused NGOs; EleCrew in Zimbabwe and EcoExist in Botswana.