Chili Fencing to Defend Against Elephants
- Sue Palminteri
- Sep 29, 2016
- 1 min read
As human settlements convert increasingly more natural vegetation to farms and occupy traditional wildlife migration routes, people and wild animals come into more frequent contact, and much of this interaction is negative. In Africa, when wild animals, especially large, dangerous species like lions or elephants, disperse from protected areas and raid livestock corrals or crop fields, they can devastate subsistence farmers, who may retaliate by killing the next unlucky lion or elephant passing by (Osborn & Parker 2002, Parker et al. 2007).
Research provides increasing evidence that non-lethal means may be more effective at reducing livestock predation than lethal methods; we are presenting a series of posts that highlight such techniques and technologies used to reduce human-wildlife conflict (HWC).
Wildtech spoke with Alex Chang’a, field director of RESOLVE’s Elephant-Chili project in northern Tanzania. Chang’a has worked with farming communities outside some of the country’s famous national parks, including Tarangire and Mikumi, to test and promote the installment of chili fences around crops and financial support for building and maintaining them. As we discussed in this series’ first post on the use of chili to reduce human-elephant conflict (HEC), elephants have super sensitive noses and dislike the smell of chili, so these fences consist of ropes and pieces of cloth coated with a mixture of ground chili and engine oil.
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