In Zambia they contributed to reducing the poaching of elephants, by helping poachers earn a living with skills such as beekeeping, carpentry, midwifery, and weaving.
She has also worked as a roving editor for International Wildlife, lectured throughout North America and participated in conservation efforts for the grizzly bear throughout the United States.
[19] In December 2018, it was announced that Fox 2000 Pictures had acquired the rights to the book and that Reese Witherspoon's production company Hello Sunshine would produce the film adaptation.
[21] On March 30, 1996, the ABC news-magazine show Turning Point aired a documentary titled "Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story", which included the filmed murder of an alleged poacher, executed while lying collapsed on the ground after having already been shot.
[22] The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg subsequently interviewed Chris Everson, the ABC cameraman who filmed the killing of the alleged poacher.
Goldberg reported in an article called "The Hunted" in The New Yorker in 2010 that the Zambian police detective in charge of the subsequent investigation, Biemba Musole, had concluded that Mark Owens, with the help of his scouts, placed the victim's body in a cargo net, attached it to his helicopter, and then dropped it into a nearby lagoon.
The former Zambian national police commissioner, Graphael Musamba, told Goldberg that the investigation had been stymied by the absence of a body: "The bush is the perfect place to commit murder … The animals eat the evidence.
However, her novel Where the Crawdads Sing, has aroused suspicion from those on her book tour about the parallels between the main character Kya and her case, and Delia's own alleged accusation.
In June 2022, Zambian police officials told Jeffery Goldberg that they believe that Delia Owens should be interrogated as a possible witness, co-conspirator, and accessory to felony crimes.