The Asian elephant is a
national symbol in many countries throughout Asia
and has played an important role for thousands of years. Historically, elephants were used in wars as
warriors, they were used to transport goods and they were worshipped as Gods.
Elephants are very unique as they are one of the few species that evoke so much
attention and varied emotions from humans. Their large size, characteristic
features, complex social behavior and high level of intelligence create much
interest and endearment in people. However, their ability to cause huge amounts
of damage and their sometimes aggressive behavior also create fear and intense
animosity towards them. This negative
interactive between humans and elephants is termed `human-elephant conflict’
and is one of the most critical issues facing conservationists around the world
today. This conflict has come to seriously threaten the survival of elephants
in the wild.
Elephants need what we
need: land, food and water. This is a fundamental problem as humans have become
the elephant’s direct competitor for these resources. Where elephants roam, is
where human population growth rate is accelerating. The more people there are on
the planet, the more friction that is likely to occur between humans and
elephants. Owing to the increasing demand for resources, humans have
transformed forests, savannahs and other ecosystems into agricultural land and
cities, leaving fewer resources for wildlife. Elephants have less and less
habitat in which to live, leading them to wander into human settlements, and
this is when the problems occur.
With increased human
contact, elephants progressively raid crop fields and break down houses to get
at stored crops. Elephants can cause huge amounts of damage to
farmers’ crops, often eating and destroying whole fields. For example, an
elephant eats around 200 kg (~440 lbs) of food per day, and a single elephant
can destroy a hectare of crops in a very short time (1 hectare = 2 and half
soccer fields or 40 tennis courts). Therefore, a small herd can quickly decimate
a farmer's livelihood. Cultivated food
crops have been artificially selected and bred to increase their nutritional
value, palatability and productivity. Therefore, these crops have become more
attractive to herbivores like elephants than wild plants. Often, the people who suffer these attacks
are already economically and nutritionally vulnerable, and the loss of crops
can have grave consequences for their income and food consumption. Chance encounters
between elephants and people, as well as efforts of people to guard against
elephants raiding, often result in the injury and death of humans. An intense
animosity towards the elephants is thus created and the financial and human losses
caused by elephants make local communities angry and intolerant towards them.
This can result in the killing of elephants, thereby escalating human-elephant
conflict and making elephant populations vulnerable to local extinction.
All over Asia,
human-elephant conflict is a critical problem. In Sri Lanka the situation is
very serious as every year approximately 100 elephants are killed by humans and
50 humans are killed by elephants. Without mitigating this conflict, the
problem will escalate further.
A variety of traditional
methods to try to reduce human-elephant conflict have been used over the past
few centuries. However, following an increasing level of conflict,
technological advances have resulted in the development of new methods to try to
mitigate the problem. Traditional methods are easy to use, require low grade
material and the costs of using them are relatively low. Examples of these techniques
include chasing elephants away from fields by shouting, drum-beating,
noise-making, throwing rocks and using fire, and guarding fields. More
recently, people have used elephant barriers such as electrical fences, alarm
systems, and trenches, as well as planting inedible crops. Novel techniques
have also been created such as the use of chili and bee-hive fences to deter
crop raiding elephants. Elephants do not like the smell of chili and if they
come into contact with it, a skin irritation will occur. Farmers have used this
knowledge and created chilli fences, where they paste chilli onto cloths and
hang them up on string fences. This technique has proved to be effective in
deterring elephants. Chilli bricks (sundried chilli mixed with cattle dung) are
also used, as when they are burnt, they create a vapour which stops elephants
from entering farms. In Kenya ,
honey bee fences are used. Researchers have found that elephants are actually
scared of the sound of bees and so they have created fences with honey bee
hives. Not only do these fences deter elephants from entering fields, but
farmers are also able to make money from the honey. Other more complicated
methods to reduce conflict include translocation, removing the problem animal,
supplementary feeding, compensation and land use planning. All these methods
are very expensive and vary in terms of degree of success.
Being intelligent and
highly adaptable animals, elephants will learn to overcome many methods used
for mitigation. For example, elephants have overcome trenches as they have
learnt that filling up the trenches by pushing in dirt, enables them to walk
across. There has been considerable variation in the success and failure of the
different methods mentioned, and some methods that were initially successful
may lose their effectiveness over time. Thus,
there is no perfect deterrent that will work entirely on its own. Rather, it is
has proved prudent to train and equip farmers with a tool box of various
deterrents that, either combined or rotated, will have a greater effect than
relying on any one method alone. No single method is likely to be long-term. Thus current
methods have to be constantly updated and improved and ongoing research has to
be conducted into new and innovative techniques.
If we continue to destroy
elephant habitats at the current rate then, despite the novelty and success of
some of these mitigation methods, there will be even higher levels of conflict,
and we may eventually lose these beautiful creatures altogether. The loss of
elephants would be one of the greatest tragedies that humans would have allowed
to happen.
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