With an infectious grin, this enthusiastic scientist eagerly shares his data, allowing you to witness the precise routes and tracks of individual animals. Among them are elephants traversing between Etosha National Park and Etosha Heights, one of Namibia’s largest private reserves, which shares a 65-kilometre- long boundary with the park. Morgan reveals that these collared animals exhibit such extensive movement that one might anticipate them using the park’s entrance gate. However, surprisingly, they are not. Instead, they are breaking through fences, performing a mesmerising dance of movement across landscapes and boundaries, as depicted on Morgan’s screen.

With each fence breakage, there is a heightened risk of injury to the animals, necessitating replacement at a cost to the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism. Morgan emphasises the frequency of these incidents, recounting a recent episode where an elephant bull was entangled in wire, which prompted immediate action. “It happens all the time,” he laments. “Because it’s the red line that gets broken, by law it has to be fixed. It’s a constant cycle of repair due to frequent breaches. Now, on the southern boundary, they’ve established a breathing buffer to mitigate these issues.”

Turning to his computer, Morgan selects a single example, one elephant, to underscore his point. “If you examine the data and quantify the number of fences breached over the course of a year, this particular elephant herd made a staggering 144 breaches between the park and commercial farms, many of them of the veterinary cordon fence.”

The veterinary cordon fence, also known as the red line, is a pest-exclusion fence that serves as a delineation between northern Namibia and the central and southern regions. Originally established as a political demarcation boundary in 1907, the red line carries significant historical weight, deeply intertwined with Namibia’s colonial past. Historically, the northern areas were predominantly subject to indirect colonial rule through traditional authorities. Over time, the line has shifted, with an actual fence eventually erected in the early 1960s to contain outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in the north from spreading to the farms in the south. Today, the red line plays a pivotal role, granting Namibia its unique status to export meat across the European Union.