I saw that in Africa they were using beehives. They hang the beehives on wires ...the wire is going all around the field, and when an elephant approach the field and touch the wire, the bees get excited and start bothering the elepahnt ....works only during the day...

I agree with Franck. What is also being tried

is the growl of tigers and chili pepper.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/cp-efo100207.php

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2807%2901718-6

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-crop-raiding-elephants-tiger-growls.html

http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10717

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6173684

http://www.elephantpepper.org/downloads/Parker_Osborn_chilli06.pdf

http://www.elephantpepper.org/

Other:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5895693_Elephants_classify_human_ethnic_groups_by_odor_and_garment_color

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/cp-tab082510.php

Regards,

Joachim

Article Elephants Classify Human Ethnic Groups by Odor and Garment Color

"Every year about a dozen people are killed by wild elephants in Nepal"

OK, and why is that a bad news?

Thanks Frank, Joachim, Zsolt and Thomas!

@ Joachim, I will review these if any can be implemented here in Nepal

@ Thomas, yes I met with him and had a very short conversation about his research, but we talked only about the genetic sample collection. Good to know about the paper, wild be interesting to see when published. I am also interested on study of these problem elephants, NTNC & Chitwan National Park we are planning to put satellite collars on 4-5 wild bulls (the most problematic ones) from Chitwan-Parsa area this winter. I would love to meet you and Dinesh next month, and discuss more about this.

Baburam Dai,

Since I am working in Stress-biology of elephants in India which are considered to be "rogue" ( though they, actually, are not) I have been working on the "problematic ones". I am delighted to know that the elephants are going to be collared. It's a great news. I would love to work on them, too. Any possibilities?

The issue of HEC is a growing problem especially in areas with high human-elephant interaction. Studies indicate that this is more prevalent in human communities living adjacent to protected areas with high elephant populations. Also problems have peak periods especially during the cropping seasons.There are a number of measurers being taken to alleviate this problem including the use of traditional and contemporary methods like use of chilli pepper and chilli bombs, but these have proved not to be very effective in the long-term. what's important is to look beyond the feeding ecology of elephants, know their traditional movements and avoid settling in elephant corridors. It can also be useful to manage the elephant population, erect elephant proof barriers like electric fences though they are expensive and creation of buffer zones. Human behaviour comes in as well, where people living with elephants should desist from certain behaviours that expose them to vulnerability like moving at night drunk, trying to chase elephants using dogs, etc. However, this subject requires further research to establish the causes of HEC as these may differ from place to place.

One would assume that the attacks of wild elephants on people is near or inside farms. Is this however indeed the case? If so, fine - some type of elephant deterance or elephant-presence warning system could be used to help reduce H-E interactions and assumingly crop raiding damage. We are involved in developing a HEC monitoring project near Korup NP in Cameroon, but still in the early stages. However, what if these 12 annual deaths in Nepal are not in farms. What if they are when people are involved in activities (legal or illegal) within the forest. Even more pertinently, do we know if the elephants were not actively threateend by the people? In Korup region, several of the attacks were inside the protected area and in one case probably in response to the elephants being threatened. Probably worth exploring the locality of the Nepalse attacks (and by teh way, not only the lethal ones...) if you have not done so already Babu. It will assist with better focusing any mitigation measures.

After noticing this question,I came across many articles showing ultrasonic sensing abilities in elephants.I think this provides a viable lead towards constructing an appropriate sono dettorrent device which can produce sonic frequencies that can deter elephants

Here in southern Africa more elephants are killed by humans than vice versa. It is mostly the economy that counts. In broad terms, high input farming and upmarket wildlife tourism can be economically separated by elephant-proof fences (e.g. Addo NP in RSA). The rate of return on capital investment in fences is likely to be positive. Where low value farming and upmarket wildlife tourism prevail (northern Namibia) you can afford compensation of crop loss resulting from sharing land between farmers and safari-tourists. In such situation provisions (regulations, institutions, armed guards) need to be in place to quickly cull problem elephants, often old male loners. May be the described Nepal situation is low input farming on land shared with elephant without much income from tourism? Please get the idea by browsing my articles on East African elephant, Mountain Gorilla and Apennine bear sharing resources with humans.

In agricultural areas with high abundance of large herbivores, especially elephants, new approaches to crop protection are needed. The IUCN Red List ranks human-elephant conflicts as one of the three major threats to the species survival. The selection of appropriate, less attractive or even unpalatable crops is an important step to tackle these conflicts. If the pachyderms do not find nutritious and attractive crops on the farms in their home range, reduction of crop losses is very likely. To foster this approach however, more detailed studies are needed, to observe the resistance of the crops in long-term and to identify a larger diversity of unattractive crops. Given a good market access these crops should serve both, people and threatened wildlife species.

We recently published a research paper on a field experiment which was conducted by Awely and the SLCS in Zambia. We could show that cultivating alternative crops (ginger, garlic, lemon grass) containing allelochemicals which may unattractive or even repellent to elephants, reduces crop losses due to African elephants in South Luangwa, Zambia. The selection of crops which are less attractive, deterrent or repellent to large herbivores needs to be considered as a strategy to reduce conflicts between farmers and endangered wildlife species.

Please look at our publication.

Article Cultivating alternative crops reduces crop losses due to Afr...