Hive You Herd Of This Relephant Project To Save The Elephants?!

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Did you know that a large part of the elephants' habitat is being encroached on by human settlement in Asia and Africa? This results in a very big human-elephant conflict, as Asian elephants can weight up to 5.5 tons and African elephants up to 7 tons!  These are ginormous animals to be having conflicts with! In India, an average of 300 humans are killed annually due to elephants raiding farm land, and 40 to 60 elephants are killed by retaliation from humans. There are many ways we can help prevent the frequency of human-elephant conflicts that continue to increase as humans unfortunately continue to encroach on the elephants habitat.

African Elephants in Malawi, Africa-Elephants and Bees Project

As mentioned in the "Preventing Conflicts" blog post, a  cost efficient option could be planting chili plants around farms to prevent elephants from raiding crop fields which has shown some decrease in the frequency of human-elephant conflict in areas that it is put into practice. Another new and innovative project is the Elephant and Bees Project which all of the information from this blog post was found on their website, the link to follow is at the end of this blog post. The Elephant and the Bees Project has come up with a new and cost friendly option to help reduce human-elephant conflict which has an 80% success rate. Not only will this reduce conflict, it will also produce a secondary source of income via honey. They are called beehive fences! The fences cost $150 to $500 per every 100m. Compared to other methods, this is a great low cost option with a very high success rate!  
 
Elephant near a beehive fence in South Africa-The Elephants and Bees Project

The beehive fences are simple (and cheap!) to build and easy to maintain. All of the materials for the fence are locally sourced, which means the money spent on the products stays in the community! The hives are strung up 10m apart from one another and linked together in a special formation. This precise formation is an integral part of the beehive fence. If an elephant touches any part of the fence or wire, all of the bees are disturbed and release.  The beehive fence is an innovative, simple, cost effective, and environmentally friendly option to help reduce human-elephant conflicts in Africa and Asia!

Sagalla Beehive Fence- Elephants and Bees Project

 If you want to continue reading up on this amazing project, follow the link Elephants and Bees Project and see for yourselves how the bees can help save the elephants!

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