Community-based methods to reduce crop loss to elephants: experiments in the communal lands of Zimbabwe
By F. Osborn, G. Parker. Pachyderm, 2002
96 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This study compared an experimental community based strategy for protecting crops with current deterrent methods involved 7 villages in a high elephant population area in Guruve District in northern Zimbabwe. The experimental deterrents included warning systems, barriers and active deterrents and were designed to increase the capacity of the farmers to detect and repel elephants. Presently used methods of deterrence of raiding elephants problematic, traditional deterrents used by rural farmers become ineffective over time 'and interventions by NGOs or wildlife authorities tend to be expensive and unsuitable in remote locations'. Individual experimental methods were more effective at deterring elephants than current traditional methods and the 'integrated strategy' which combined two or more of the deterrent significatnly reduced the total crop damage in the study villages. Results suggest elephants can be deterred from crop raiding using relatively inexpensive materials that are locally available and that local communities can administer: buffer zones, watchtowers, fire, alarms and noise makers ( drums, firecrakers, cow bells) burning chilli pepper and dung bricks, rocks and other thrown objects.
Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d86330223c0346fd48ae6769034c3900cb87db8
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
- Hannah S. Mumby
- Joshua M. Plotnik
- K. Dunham
- Andrea Ghiurghi
- G. Parker
- F. Osborn
- Rezia Cumbi
- Ferdinando Urbano
Citations in the corpus
- Towards an integrated approach for reducing the conflict between elephants and people: a review of current research (2003, background): “…rotating ‘guard duty’ whereby only a few farmers patrol during the night, and when an elephantzone for elephants, a zone of ‘reduced attractiveness’ between the protected area and the surrounding crops is sighted other farmers are woken to chase crop raiding elephants away (Osborn & Parker, 2002).”
- Human–wildlife conflict in Mozambique: a national perspective, with emphasis on wildlife attacks on humans (2010, background): “There has been extensive research into human–elephant conflicts in Africa (Hoare & Du Toit, 1999; Hoare, 2000, 2001; O’Connell-Rodwell et al., 2000; De Boer & Ntumi, 2001; Osborn & Parker, 2002; Osborn, 2004; Barnes et al., 2005; Chiyo et al., 2005; Sam et al., 2005; Sitati & Walpole, 2006).”
- Taking the Elephants' Perspective: Remembering Elephant Behavior, Cognition and Ecology in Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation (2018, background): “Even softer measures such as coating fences in chili peppers (Osborn and Parker, 2002; Le Bel et al., 2015) or using bees to deter elephants (King et al.”