(NAIROBI, Kenya) — As cute and confident as Pardamat now seems, the little elephant had a difficult start to life.
“Pardamat was found next to the dead body of his mother,” Edwin Lusichi, head keeper at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s nursery in Nairobi, Kenya, where Pardamat is being cared for, told ABC News. “His mother had a big wound that had been caused by human beings.”
The story is similar for many elephants across the country — victims of what’s known as “human-wildlife conflict,” which has surpassed poaching as the No. 1 cause of illegal elephant death in Kenya, according to conservation groups.
Conservation groups say the growing human population, combined with drought and resource scarcity linked to climate change, are increasingly causing people and elephants to compete for things like space, food and water.
A common scenario involves elephants raiding and destroying crops in search of food. Some vulnerable farmers, desperate to protect their livelihoods, retaliate by spearing the elephants.
“The shopping malls, the roads, have been built on lands that used to belong to elephants and their migration routes,” Lusichi said. “So the resources are not there for humans and wildlife, and so animals are forced to get into human properties.”
According to some conservation groups, the issue has been exacerbated by the proliferation of new commercial farms growing crops like avocados for the West and China.
Every year, hundreds of people around the world are killed or injured by elephants due to conflict between humans and elephants, conversation groups said.
In southern Kenya, such conflict has become so common that some rangers now patrol farmlands on a nightly basis.
“On a busy night, on a dry season, even 20 elephants can come and raid,” Daniel Kutata, a ranger for the nonprofit conservation organization Big Life Foundation, told ABC News. “Farmers will be losing their crops, which they are depending on to earn a living, so yeah, there is a lot of pressure. We need both farmers and elephants to be safe.”
Big Life has installed an electric fence to help keep elephants within their protected areas. The organization reports that this initiative has significantly improved the situation, although some elephants have learned how to get around it.
A Maasai farmer who spoke to ABC News shortly after his tomato farm was raided told us he lost months of hard work and approximately $4,000 — that’s about eight times the average monthly salary in Kenya.
Save the Elephants, a research and conservation organization headquartered in Nairobi, has been working with local farmers to develop creative solutions to the problem.
ABC News spoke with farmer Jonas Makima, who nearly gave up on his business due to elephants raiding his crops.
“If an elephant gets onto the farm and raids everything, then it means now, you’ll not have food for the family, you’ll not have money for education for my children,” Makima said.
Makima told ABC News that during crop season, every night is a battle. He has set up all sorts of contraptions around his farm to keep the elephants away, including a watch tower, a sound cannon, and “chili bombs.”
However, Makima said his most effective tool is his beehive fence. A project by Save the Elephants found that elephants avoid crops up to 86% of the time during peak seasons because they are terrified of bees.
With Kenya’s population expected to double by 2070, Makima is now working with Save the Elephants to teach farmers across Africa that peaceful coexistence between people and elephants is possible with the right tools.
“People need to be educated, people need to know what to do when they encounter these animals in their farms,” Lusichi said. “And people need to know that these animals also have a right to life, a right to their space, so these habitats should not be invaded and occupied and used by people.”
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