Last year, when we took our
granddaughters (and their parents) to Kenya
we saw the results of one such conflict at the elephant orphanage outside Nairobi.
A tiny calf, no more than a week old had been rescued in the
Imenti forest a scant three kilometres from our old home in Meru. His mother had been killed in
what was termed “Human wildlife conflict.”
My own direct involvement
with the war, for that is what it is, goes back 37 years to Rwanda, where elephants had started to
kill people and destroy their homes. At the time this was the most densely
populated country in Africa. Peasant farmers, scratching a living on their
small plots by growing some maize, matooke,
beans or other crops would wake up in the morning to find the entire year’s
supply of food for the family had been wiped out. An adult elephant needs tons
of food every day, and those crops would have been a perfect source of readily
available groceries.
The solution, at the
time, was to cull the entire Rwandan population of what was certainly viewed as
a major predator. I got involved when President
Habyarimana persuaded the African
Wildlife Foundation that monies they wanted for the gorilla project should
instead be used to save human lives. At first all the elephants were to be destroyed,
but then it was decided, for political reasons, that an effort should be made
to save the younger animals and translocate them to a national park.
Several people who have read
my account of the project in WrestlingWith Rhinos, during which we moved
twenty-seven young elephants to the Akagera National Park
have quizzed me on why we did not drive all the animals to the park. Short
answer – Mission Impossible. The herds were in small family units and widely
dispersed; they would have had to move through hundreds of small farms and
plantations and would have destroyed everything in their paths, crops, buildings,
vehicles and of course people.
The Rwandan skirmish was but
one chapter in a conflict that has gone on for at least a hundred years, and
perhaps much longer. It continues today, and not just in Africa. Elephants and
people in India and their close cousins in South Asian countries like Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Borneo and others
are under similar pressures.
Several solutions have been
tried. Desperate famers in India and
Indonesia have tried to drive the
huge beasts away with fire. That is, at best, a temporary measure and fraught
with risk for the people. Fire baskets run back and forth on overhead wires work
for a while to keep the marauders out. With illegal logging and massive
development of palm oil plantations crushing the hungry giants into ever-smaller
areas the famers and the elephants are losing ground.
Moorlands at 13,000 ft. Mt. Kenya from the north |
The peaks from the forest edge |
Kenya’s northern
agricultural area around Mt. Kenya,
the Aberdare Mountains and the
grasslands of Laikipia at least two
attempted methods have ended in failure.
Wide, brush-covered ditches were dug
at the Aberdare forest edges, where farms come right up to the trees. They
worked for a while as the elephants were fearful of stepping on the brush when
they could not see what lay beneath. Once the huge job of maintenance declined
the elephants figured it all out, and were back into the maize and other
goodies.
As elephant numbers increased
on the open plains attempts were made to drive them back with helicopters and
flash guns. This also failed as the elephants soon returned and took no notice
of repeated attempts to drive them. Some elephants were captured in family
groups and translocated.
We even saw some of them in their new home in Meru National Park, our favourite among
all the parks of Kenya.
This was fine and dandy, but
one cannot capture elephants that hang out in the forests. Too bushy, too difficult, too dangerous.
Two modern solutions have
been developed. One is ideal for the individual small holder and particularly
applies to families living outside the forests. This is very definitely a case
of “thinking outside the box.” Of course this is a cliché, but it is also a
pun.
The box in this case is a
beehive. Zoologist Dr. Lucy King,
working in Kenya, figured it out. Rural Kenyans, particularly the Ndorobo, are avid honey eaters, and
they make hives for wild bees from hollowed out logs.
One thing that elephants do
not like is bees. If African bees are
disturbed they are likely to swarm and attack. The elephant skin is probably
impervious to the stings, but around the eyes, and especially inside the very
sensitive trunk, bee stings obviously hurt.
One semi-tame bull elephant was described as “going berserk” when stung
there. They may not get ‘bees in their bonnets’, but ‘up the trunk’ obviously
does the trick.
Dr. King has taken these two
facts and writes about her research in her own website
The ‘outside the box’ idea
was to use actual beehives as part of a crop-protection fence after Lucy and
her supervisor found that elephants could even be driven off if they heard the
sound of buzzing bees.
As you can see in this photo
that Lucy took, and has released to the media, farmers can construct a fence
that has beehives strung on wires every few metres around their plots of
crops. Any touch of the wires by an
elephant (or a careless human) will set the wires a-twanging, and the hives
a-swinging. Ouch!
While the technique is not
100% effective it has helped reduce elephant incursions considerably. The by-product is delicious honey that the
farmers can sell.
While this elegant solution
will work most of the time for a number of smallholders it is obviously not
practical for the hundreds of kilometres of forest boundary around the two
massifs of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdares.
Corner construct on the Aberdares |
This electrified fence around
the Aberdares was completed in August 2009, twenty years after the first posts
were driven. It was done at enormous (but unstated) cost, all funded through the charitable
trust Rhino Ark
whose byline is Humans in Harmony with
Habitat and Wildlife. The trust describes the fence as “an ecosystem
conservation tool.” You can read some fascinating detail about it at their
website. A couple of things that caught my eye were that much of the labour was
done by local folks and at least a hundred scouts patrol the fence on a regular
basis.
Kazita river gorge. Mt. Kenya |
With
that fence all done and dusted, the next project, as reported on the BBCwebsite is a similar structure on Mt. Kenya. It will run for at least 400 km across
many river valleys and take an estimated 5 years to complete and current cost
estimates are $11.8 million. Here are a couple of pics that illustrate the density & complexity involved.
Trout fishing on the Kazita river above Meru |
The elephants will not be
completely cut off from their traditional migrations. One corridor has been
constructed on the north side of Mt. Kenya that allows them to migrate up and
down the slopes. They can start in the world-famous Lewa Conservancy and move up through the corridor that lies on land donated
by our friends the Murrays at Marania farm into their high-altitude homes.
There is a downloadable map here
The fences, also electrified, work most of the time although last year the
family had a bit of a scare when one old and very wise bull found his way
outside the constraints of the wire. We saw the evidence of his nighttime passage
a couple of days later as enormous footprints indenting the lawn.
Bongo bull at the Mount Kenya Game Ranch |
There is one other species
that will at least be deterred. Humans will not be so ready to cross into the
forest for poaching activities or for firewood.
3 comments:
Interesting post I really enjoyed reading this. Lots of good information. The end result is hopefully what we need, save the animals and deter the poachers. Diane
I really enjoyed reading this post. I love the informative nature of it without it being dry. My heart goes out to the animals affected... In the past I have made some small efforts to save animals all over the world, but they are nothing compared to what you are doing. Thank you for being the light that shines on this problem!
Good to hear your thoughts, both of you. Please feel free to share the post with your Facebook, Twitter or other Internet friends
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