The importance of investing in human-elephant conflict mitigation
Sharing a landscape with elephants can be challenging and dangerous, as highlighted by a recent incident of elephant conflict in Meru Conservation Area.
Meru elephants (c) Peter Ndungu
The Meru Conservation Area (MCA) is a vast landscape of more than 5,000 square kilometres in Kenya. Within the MCA, elephants can pose a risk to communities, which is why developing measures to reduce human-elephant conflict and to promote coexistence is at the centre of what we are trying to achieve through our Saving Meru’s Giants (SMG) project.
The Born Free SMG team delivers a suite of activities designed to mitigate conflict between people and elephants.
Many communities living in the periphery of the largely unfenced protected areas in this region are agriculturalists, growing various crops for income and food. Elephants move in and out of the protected area, particularly at migratory times of the year, and can visit farms to feed on farmers’ crops that may seem like easy pickings to an elephant.
Beehive fencing
Elephants may cause considerable damage to crops and property, and can pose a threat to life. Living and raising a family under these circumstances can be difficult, and tolerance for wild elephants is often low, hindering coexistence.
To help farmers protect their crops and their livelihoods, the Born Free team delivers a beehive fence scheme, whereby crop fields are encircled with beehives connected to each other by a straight, horizontal wire tied to strong poles. When attempting to enter the field, an elephant will knock the straight wire, disturbing the beehives and bringing the bees out in a defensive swarm. Elephants have an aversion to bees, which means they are likely to be deterred from persisting.
Elephant toolkit
Additionally, Born Free distributes and provides training and materials to the communities for a human-elephant conflict ‘toolkit’. The toolkit describes cheap, easy to apply, and locally available tools that deter elephant crop-foraging, including noise deterrents, unpalatable crops and chilli bricks. Farmers are encouraged and empowered to utilise a variety of these additional tools to help keep their crops and their families safe.
Lastly, the Born Free team delivers elephant behaviour workshops. They use a papier-mâché elephant puppet to act out different likely scenarios involving elephants, giving people the knowledge and skills they need to act appropriately to diffuse a situation with an elephant and to help everyone stay safer.
Elephant puppet
The Born Free team is working very hard to roll out and deliver these activities across the MCA. Equally, communities of the MCA are doing all they can to live in peaceful coexistence with elephants, in the face of real and grave threats. But not all incidents can be avoided and, sadly, we are sometimes reminded about just how difficult and fragile the situation is.
In August 2024, the tranquil village of Kanjoo, on the north-west border of the MCA, was shaken by a series of events involving two elephants who strayed outside the boundaries of Meru National Park.
Born Free Conservation Ambassador, Patrick Kanake, was called by a member of the community, and he quickly alerted the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) community warden. An attempt was made by the KWS response team to steer the elephants back into the park. However, a crowd formed, and the elephants became frightened, tragically killing two people, injuring another two, killing a cow, and damaging two houses and a motorbike.
The injury and loss of community members and damage to property has deeply affected the village, leaving them grappling with fear and anger, and the whole Born Free team extends its condolences to the families so deeply affected.
The incident further strengthens the resolve of the Born Free team and its partners to invest in managing conflict with elephants in this area. Patrick Kanake emphasised the need for ongoing communication and education: “If people had more knowledge about elephant behaviour and the ways to diffuse such situations, maybe we could prevent such tragedies.”
The Born Free team will work closely with KWS and in consultation and dialogue with the communities to ensure that those who are at risk benefit from the conflict mitigation tools we provide, in the hope that tragedies such as this can be avoided in the future.
By working together, we are striving to create a safer environment for both people and wildlife, promoting a landscape of coexistence.
Help us end human-wildlife conflict
Supporting local communities with practical and affordable tools to prevent conflict with wildlife is vitally important in our conservation efforts – but we can only do it with your help.