Graham A. Mcculloch

Dr Graham McCulloch is a wildlife ecologist who has spent the past 26 years in Botswana, conducting research and working in the conservation and wildlife management sector. Graham arrived in Botswana in 1994, after being awarded a 2.1 Honours Degree in Zoology at the University of Dundee in Scotland. After 4 years working as a professional guide in one of Botswana’s premier safari camps, Graham embarked on a PhD to understand the ecology and biodiversity of the Makgadikgadi salt pans wetland system, through the University of Dublin Trinity College. Gaining a PhD led Graham into a career as an ecological consultant. In 2007, he established a consulting company: EcoStars (Pty) Ltd. and was contracted to assist develop various community area and protected area management plans, at local, national and regional levels. He also co-founded a community owned game reserve outside the City of Francistown; called Tachila Nature Reserve. During his consultancy career, he was biodiversity expert on a team of experts that contributed a Strategic Environmental Asseessment (SEA) of the famous Okavango Delta. This was the beginning of a long-term association with the Okavango and he moved to Maun, on the edge of the Okavango, in 2008, where he continued consulting for various management plans and community projects. In 2013, Graham co-founded an NGO called the Ecoexist Project, with his partner Dr Anna Songhurst, an elephant biologist and HEC expert, and Dr Amanda Stronza, a professor of antropology at Texas A&M University. Ecoexist is a field-level intervention and research project that aims promote coexistence between people and elephants in the Okavango region by supporting the lives and livelihoods of people living with elephants. As a co-director of the Ecoexist Trust, Graham has helped raise a great deal of funding for projects and interventions in and around the communities of the Okavango Panhandle area. Improving benefits among people who are in direct competition with elephants for space and resources is one of the projects major focuses. To address this, and in the absence of a market for elephant friendly products, Graham co-founded the Okavango Craft Brewery, in Maun, in 2019, a manufacturing hub that pays higher prices for grains, harvested by ‘elephant aware’ farmers who coexist with elephants. With his business partners and a team of crafty innovators, quality craft beer made with malted millet from ‘elephant aware’ farmers is one of the 'elephant aware' products Graham creates at the brewery. The hope is that this enterprise will stimulate a wildlife-based circular economy that bridges value chains and generates sustainable, market-linked incentives for coexistence. Graham McCulloch P.O. Box HA122 HAK, Maun, Botswana gmc.ocb@gmail.com +267 75149403 / 73149516