Safeguarding Crops

Saving both elephants and livelihoods with simple solutions requires constant invention. Elephants are smart but a bright young team in Tanzania is busy innovating to find sustainable ways to help rural farmers living on the edge of protected areas safeguard their crops.

On the outskirts of a remote Tanzanian village, two farmers squat at the side of a maize field. One scoops up dirt; small chips of rock tumbling from his hand as he carefully places a handful of the warm soil onto a piece of paper spread before him by the other. A plastic bag is split open, and a generous amount of hot red chili powder is poured out, then mixed into the soil. Finally, a foil packet containing a condom is revealed as the unlikeliest component in the construction. Gently unfurling it, they embark on the delicate operation of stuffing it with the pungent soil-chili mixture, before adding a small firecracker and tying the top, leaving its fuse protruding. As the contraption is held up, a broad smile crosses both their faces. This simple device, a Chili Cracker, will help him keep their crops safe.

A farmer can lose several acres of crops in a single night if elephants invade a farm. Crop destruction can be devastating for rural communities relying on farming for their livelihood.

As human settlements spread, and crop production increases to support a rapidly growing population, agriculture encroaches further on elephant habitats, bringing with it increased contact and conflict. With their livelihoods at stake, negativity towards elephants and the protected areas they inhabit festers, then communities start looking at killing elephants as a solution to the problems they are facing. Key to any long-term conservation solutions is supporting a peaceful co-existence between wildlife and people.

Our demonstration isn’t quite over. Despite a strong, hot wind that’s causing small dust tornadoes to whirl around the fields, they want us to see and hear the effect of the Chili Cracker, so a huddle is made against the breeze, the fuse is lit and suddenly it’s arcing across the sky towards imaginary elephants. With a loud and sharp crack, the Chili Cracker explodes, its contents carried on the wind. Naturally, neither sound or smell is welcome to an elephant, and as long as you’ve chosen your position correctly for the prevailing wind, the result should be elephants moving off the crops. There is ingenuity to these low-tech but clever methods of crop protection. Importantly, they can safely deter elephants allowing farmers to preserve their crops without harming wildlife.

Lemuta Meng’oru is a young Tanzanian who, as a farmer, came into conflict with elephants and has experienced first-hand the destruction they can inflict on a crop. He now works for Honeyguide, a non-profit NGO committed to → developing sustainable enterprises within community protected areas of northern Tanzania. As a Human Wildlife Conflict Officer, it’s his job to look at strategies to prevent crop destruction, using methods that are accessible in small rural villages.

He talks knowledgeably about the Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) Toolkit that he and his team have been developing. The words ‘Innovation’ are written large on the wall behind one of the desks at their headquarters in Arusha. Innovation is the byword for their work. Keep thinking, experimenting, and educating the farmers so they can reduce any potential conflict, ensuring both human and elephant can coexist peacefully.

The toolkit needs to use methods and technology that are accessible in remote farming villages, can keep the humans implementing them safe, and remain effective over time. It’s perhaps the latter that is the most challenging; elephants are clever and quickly become desensitised to some of the tactics deployed, requiring constant innovation and invention.

Lemuta is quick to establish that first and foremost, it is essential to understand elephant behaviour, before deploying any of the tools they have developed as part of the kit. “We teach people about elephants so they can use the tools safely. For example, we tell them that they need to pay attention to things like wind direction before they start using the toolkit. We stress the importance of respecting the elephants to help avoid dangerous interactions. Simple things such as staying quiet until you know their location makes a big difference to human safety.”

The toolkit itself is purposely low-tech. “We start off by looking at what the villagers are using already and then consider how we can improve the efficiency of what they are already doing. There is no point in us developing solutions that aren’t quick and efficient to use, or that require significant investment such as the use of drones. We look to address the challenge of human-elephant conflict through constant adaptation and by teaching an understanding of elephant behavior to ensure coexistence. Our toolkit offers simple but effective solutions.”

On talking to farmers, the Honeyguide team discovered that torchlight was traditionally the first line of defence, along with noise; either shouting or banging pans. “We took these ideas, talked at length to farmers, and thought about how to make them more effective,” said Lemutu. Sometimes the answers were simple; a brighter LED torch with further reach and a strobe function was far more effective than the low-cost, often battery hungry, dim flashlights in use.

Other innovations took a technique that was working, such as noise, but advanced it by adding a flashing light and increasing safety by turning it into an item that was thrown a distance away from the user, so it didn’t bring a frightened or potentially angry elephant into closer proximity where, in the dark, anything could happen.

“We want to adapt this device further” explains Lemutu. “If an elephant is 200 metres away, we need to make it so that it can be thrown close to that elephant allowing people to keep their distance.”

Another item in the tool kit, the Chilli Cracker combines an auditory and physical deterrent. Elephants have a strong sense of smell and an intense dislike of chilli powder. A cloud of the spice is generally enough of an unpleasant irritant to make them leave. Full instructions are given to farmers and the chilli crackers have proven to be inexpensive, accessible, and effective. However, like most deterrents, they can decrease in effectiveness over time. As a final line of defence, a modified roman candle firework has a 100% effectiveness in deterring elephants to date. Once fired it releases a series of loud explosions accompanied by bright flashes. However, as a single-use item, they are expensive, and farmers are advised they should be used as a last resort when elephants are refusing to leave a farm and all the other tools have been used.

A key part of Lemutu’s role is monitoring the success of the toolkits. “Before we started this programme, some farmers were only harvesting around 10% of their crop, but now many are reporting that they are able to harvest 90%,” he proudly explained. In addition, nobody has been killed while trying to protect their crops in areas where the toolkit has been deployed, and attitudes towards elephants are changing among the farmers.

Sam Shaba, Programs Manager at Honeyguide, underlines that if conservation goals are successful, we should expect that wildlife numbers will increase. “Let’s be honest, more wildlife will result in more conflict,” he says. “We need to be ahead of the game, and make sure that we are well positioned when this happens; this means we need to start today. We need to develop tools and approaches, in partnership with local communities, to protect their crops and livestock from attack. We want the local communities to be active participants in protecting the wildlife and natural resources and it is our responsibility as conservationists to help deliver the solutions that will help them to protect their farms and livestock from attack.”