Teta Tafita, Kenya – For farmers in Taita hills in southern Kenya, the elephants are a threat: they dismiss the crops and sometimes run or even kill people.
Farmers Richard Chic, 68, faced some close meetings. “On one occasion, I was trying to chase an elephant that was in my corn field, but he turned and accused me,” she remembered a check. “He stopped when he was directly in front of me, and I was able to jump from the road.”
He feels lucky. Almost two years ago, the local media reported that a 3 -year -old girl was crushed to death by an elephant in Tita Tavita province, hurt her mother.
The area where a farm check is surrounded by the largest national park in Kenya. The borders of the Eastern Tzafo National Park are less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) to the east, and Tzafo West curves around the north, west and south. The gardens have always been unwritten, allowing animals to migrate. Increasingly, this places them in the way of humans.
“The places and infrastructure we develop, we humans hinder the methods and migratory paths that the elephants used,” explains Yuka Luvonga, who is looking for coexistence between man for the sake of conservation.
The elephants eat about 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of vegetation daily, so keeping them outside the farms is difficult, especially if the feed is rare in another place. “Elephants are smart creatures.” “They will try to touch a fence, and as soon as they realize that he is not mute, they are charging.”
If farmers try to chase them, as he did a check, the elephants will sometimes turn and defend themselves. Wildlife service organizations in Kenya track the assessment of a human conflict, estimated the conflict that kills between 30 to 35 people every year in incidents related to elephants throughout Kenya.
Societies will sometimes be divided by spear or elephant poisoning, but there are other solutions, as farmers are found here.
One of them is bees.
“The elephants do not like to get tired of the bees, so they move away from the areas where the cells are located,” says Chika.
With the help of Save The Elephants, Shika is one of 50 farms who hang beehives from the wires between the columns around their farms. If the elephant touches the wire, the bee cells shake, which disturbs the bees. It is an army of small security guards that keep elephants away from the farm.
“With bee cell currencies as a fence, I can continue to grow crops and also earn a livelihood,” says Chika. This year, he achieved nearly $ 250 to sell honey.
Crops can also change a difference. Elephants love corn and watermelon. But sesame? eloquent.
Sesame plants produce the smell of elephants actively, so the 70 -year -old Gertrude Jacim was, as the exchange of corn and green fines for irrational sesame was. “Look at me, I am progressing, so I cannot repel the elephants or chase them away,” she says.
It is one of 100 farms supported to adopt sesame seed production. She says change is required urgently. “Over the years, the elephants have become very devastating.”
Agricultural practices that deter the elephants – such as beekeeping and growing sesame – have made coexistence much easier for farmers such as Chika and Jacim.
The advocates of preserving this hope that in the long run, these hearts and minds will win in an area that has reached the conflict between humans and human beings to disturbing levels.
“We have to live harmoniously with these elephants,” Yuka Luvonga says of the rescue of elephants.
Only then, both people and elephants here can continue to prosper.
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The Associated Press writer Nicholas Como in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.
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