For farmers within the Taita hills in southern Kenya, elephants are a menace: they raid crops and can often injure and even kill folks.
Farmer Richard Shika, 68, has had some shut encounters. “One time, I was trying to chase away an elephant that was in my maize field, but it turned and charged me,” Shika remembers. “It stopped when it was right in front of me, and I managed to jump out of the way.”
He feels fortunate to be alive. Almost precisely two years in the past, native media reported {that a} three-year-old woman had been trampled to demise by an elephant in Taita Taveta county, her mom injured.
The space the place Shika has his farm is sort of surrounded by Kenya’s largest National Park. The border of Tsavo East National Park is lower than 10 km to the east, and Tsavo West curves round to the north, west and south. The parks have all the time been unfenced, permitting animals to migrate. Increasingly, that places them within the path of people.
“The places and infrastructure that we humans develop hinder the migratory routes and paths which elephants used to take,” explains Yuka Luvonga, who researches human-elephant coexistence for conservation group Save The Elephants.
Elephants eat about 150 kg of vegetation a day, so retaining them off farms is difficult, particularly if forage is scarce elsewhere.
“Elephants are clever creatures,” says Shika. “They will try touching a fence, and once they realise that it is not electrified, they charge through.”
If farmers strive to chase them off, as Shika did, the elephants will typically flip and defend themselves. Kenya Wildlife Service and conservation organisations monitoring human-elephant battle estimate that 30-35 individuals are killed yearly in elephant-related incidents throughout Kenya.
Communities will typically retaliate by spearing or poisoning elephants, however there are different options, as farmers right here have discovered.
One of them is bees.
“Elephants don’t like getting stung by bees, so they keep away from areas where hives are,” Shika says.
With assist from Save The Elephants, Shika is certainly one of 50 farmers who’ve hung beehives from wires between poles round their farms. If an elephant touches the wire, the hives are rocked, disturbing the bees. It’s a military of tiny safety guards that retains elephants effectively away from the farm.
Changing crops may make a distinction. Elephants love maize and watermelons. But sesame? Blegh.
Sesame vegetation produce a scent that actively repels elephants, so for 70-year-old Gertrude Jackim, swapping out maize and inexperienced grams for sesame was a no brainer. “Look at me, I’m ageing, so I can’t fend off the elephants or chase them away,” she says.
She is certainly one of 100 farmers who’ve been supported to undertake sesame seed manufacturing. The change was urgently wanted, she says. “Over the years, the elephants have become too destructive.”
Farming practices that deter elephants — like beekeeping and rising sesame — have made coexistence a lot simpler for farmers like Shika and Jackim.
Conservationists hope that in the long term, this can win hearts and minds in an space the place human-elephant battle had reached worrying ranges.
