Elephant Repellent Project - Part 1

On average 10.000 people per year die or get seriously injured because of conflicts with wild roaming Elephants. In Kenya alone 70 people per year perish during nightly raids of the grey animals, not to mention the amount of injured humans and Elephants.

For years now all kind of defense mechanisms have been tested to protect man from animal and vice versa. Many a skilled professional has made a study to find a solution to  this problem but with no success.  Most of the suggested solutions are either economically not feasible or pose a threat to both Elephant and man.

WLCI scientists and field workers are also being confronted with angry farmers and injured Elephants on a daily base, we decided to draw the line and use our knowledge of Elephants to protect them in a different way than we had done so far.

The month of August (winter in Kenya) is a month of migrating Elephants in search of water and food, food most often found on small shambas (gardens) of farmers and small communities. Four WLCI members took up the task and faced the Elephants to test the new repellent. The repellent itself is mainly based on natural ingredients and poses no harm to flora and fauna and will, as expected, only chase away Elephants and, if desired, probably other species as well.

If this repellent works many lives will be saved, both animal and man. Of course we have to test this in the field many times and we’re sure that some changes have to be made before we have a practical solution that can be used in the bush by rangers and government in Elephant problem areas.

Elephant Repellent Projects - Part 2

First test with our new Elephant repellent is a fact

Multiple tests have been conducted in and around Kenya’s largest national park, Tsavo. This park, famous due to movies based on the book “Man Eaters of Tsavo” and “The Ghost and the Darkness”, both on the man eating lions, is home to aprox. 11,500 Elephants. In this area alone 20 to 40 people lose their lives as a result of human/wildlife conflict situations.

In the preliminary stage of the test we allocated small groups of Elephants, this of course together with KWS our long time partner in the fight against conflict animals. Our focus was on safety first since we didn’t know what the reaction of the Elephants would be once confronted with the discomfort of the powder. We always keep in mind that both animal and community have to be safe under any circumstances. The weapon of choice has a effective range of  90 yards, this meant caution when approaching the Elephants. First we wanted to know whether the powder would have any effect at all, so we decided to shoot 15 powder pellets into the first group of Elephants. The result was obvious, the whole group immediately took off, straight back into the park.

These first results promised a good result, and with great expectation we planned the next steps together with KWS. The following days it almost seemed as if the Elephants received a memo telling them to stay away or watch out for us. Even in the most raided areas they stayed way out of sight. All we found for the next 6 or 7 days was Elephant dung, proof that they’ve beaten us to it.

For weeks we left our base camp, Satao,  somewhere between 04:00 and 05:00 to team up with the rest of the team at KWS HQ in Voi. On most days we left with 2 cars, 6 rangers, 1 biologist and 2 WLCI members. Just before took off we reviewed the reports that came in during the night from the rest of the human/wildlife conflict team to determine which area to visit.

During these weeks we persuaded several  groups of Elephants to find their food elsewhere. On most occasions we found a very angry Matriarch opposite our pellet gun. In two cases we came very close to find ourselves on the wrong end of an argument.

Wrapping it all up….

As predicted, the active ingredients seemed to work. It was just that the amount of  ingredients we added later on turned out to be too low. We had to work with a standard size pellet or ball the size of a paintball round. With some sort of vacuum machine we took out some stuff and added some other ingredients. It was all too little, too soft.

This also resulted in irritation instead of a strong repelling effect. To test another way of launching the powder Linda, one of our co-workers, prepared a hand grenade with a lot of active ingredient. This was a one time test since the powder set the savannah on fire straight away.

Next step will be to prepare larger balls with more different active ingredients and in larger quantities.