The Honeyguide human-elephant conflict toolkit
Innovative tools, devised and tested in Tanzania, are helping local communities deter elephants to avoid human-wildlife conflict. This video toolkit shows how each tool – from air horns to chilli bombs – can be effectively deployed.
Across Africa, human-elephant conflicts are escalating as people and elephants vie for the same land. Humans are increasingly encroaching in wildlife habitats to meet subsistence needs, while elephants are moving ever closer to communities in search of water, damaging crops and endangering life.
This challenge is especially acute in Southern Africa, due to dense elephant populations and poor rainfall, prompting a range of initiatives to safely keep elephants away from farmers' fields where people and elephants are living in close proximity.
The tools in this toolkit were developed by Honeyguide – a Tanzanian NGO with years of experience in how to deter elephants from farmers’ fields for people living alongside wildlife.
All of the tools can be simply made or purchased at low cost. And having proved their effectiveness in Tanzania, Honeyguide is now making them available to other communities experiencing problems with elephants.
All the tools in the toolkit have been developed from an understanding of elephant behaviour. And the secret to its effectiveness is to deploy the tools in the right order.
The tools are designed to target the elephant’s sense of sight, sound and smell with deterrents that progressively increase the levels of irritation and annoyance they cause to the elephants – and therefore the level of deterrence they provide.
This video-based toolkit explains each tool and how to deploy them.
Please note that a ranger’s work is dangerous. Elephants can cause serious injury and some of these tools, if not handled correctly, can also cause injury. Appropriate care should be taken when deciding to tackle elephants in the first place, and when using these tools to do so.
What’s in the toolkit?
Before delving into the individual tools, watch the introductory video (below) which was produced when a group of community rangers from Namibia visited Honeyguide for an immersive training experience in toolkit production and deployment. This took place in June 2023 and used Tanzania's Randilen Wildlife Management Area as a training environment.
The video provides insights into the complexities of human-wildlife conflict programmes and effective mitigation strategies.
Now the introductory video has whetted your appetite, dive into the toolkit to explore how you can also become more effective at deterring elephants and preventing conflict.
The toolkit consists of four key tools:
- The torch/flashlight
- The air horn/siren
- The chilli cloud bomb
- The roman candle
The video below provides a brief overview of each of these tools. A toolkit handbook (PDF) also talks you through each tool and how to use them.
Step one: the torch
The first tool to be deployed is the torch. Purchase a torch that includes flashing strobe lights for maximum deterrence.
The flashing lights affect the elephant’s eyesight and generally provide enough of a bother to make elephants move away.
Practical tip: Any flashlight should work provided it:
- Has a strobe light between 2.5Hz to 10Hz frequency
- Has at least 400 lumens on strobe mode
- Has at least 800m of beam distance
- Has at least five hours’ battery storage on continuous use, and
- Is made of durable material, preferably aluminium.
The torch has been one of the most useful components of the toolkit. Honeyguide has found that when it has been deployed in Tanzania, flashing torches have been 70% successful at removing elephants from crops and 90% effective at turning them around before they reach farmers’ crops.
Step two: the air horn or siren
If the use of the torch is not sufficient to move elephants away, the next tool to deploy is the air horn or siren.
Again, readily available and cheap to buy, air horns or sirens are really annoying for elephants, who intensely dislike the high-frequency sounds they produce. The loud noise also disarms an elephant’s sense of hearing, making them feel unsafe.
Step three: chilli cloud
If the irritation on their eyes and ears has not deterred more stubborn elephants, then the next step is to use a chilli cloud.
Chilli clouds are a produced from a mixture of chilli powder, sand grains and firecrackers. They can easily be made at home with some very cheap ingredients and produce a combination of light, sound and smell to irritate all the elephant’s senses at once.
Our video shows you how to make and use your own chilli bombs to produce these clouds.
Step four: Roman candle
We really hope you don’t have to get to this more expensive step, but if all else fails, for the most stubborn elephants an effective deterrent is the roman candle.
These are also widely available in fireworks stores.
New developments
The team at Honeyguide is constantly experimenting to create ever more effective tools to add to this toolkit.
The latest invention is a ‘noise ball’ which, as its name suggests, makes noises as well as flashes and can be thrown quite some distance!
All these videos were created by Honeyguide’s Jamal Fadhili. This tookit and the training programme provided to Namibian community rangers by Honeyguide was funded by the UK government’s Darwin Initiative.
Honeyguide’s tool development and testing programme has also been funded by Maliasili, CFN and Nawiri. The initial toolkit training manual development was funded by USAID.
Contact
Email [email protected] for more information or to provide feedback on this toolkit.
