Botswana tries spicy solution to keep elephants at bay

Refentse Tessa Yahoo News 23 Nov 09;

GABORONE (AFP) – Tourists love to watch herds of elephants trekking across Botswana's famed Okavango Delta, but nearby farmers watch in dismay when the animals trample their crops, leaving them little to eat.

Now those farmers have a new, safe weapon to keep elephants at bay: chilli peppers.

Planted around crops, infused into cloth, even made into chilli-dung bombs -- Botswana's farmers are trying myriad uses of tabasco peppers whose potent smell repels elephants from their fields.

Government-sponsored training on how to use the chillis to best effect wrapped up last week, and farmers say they're optimistic the peppers will cut down on their crop losses as they begin planting this month.

"We are hopeful that this time around we will have better harvest unless if a natural disaster strikes," said Kgagiso Moruti, a 44-year-old villager from Eretshe village in the Okavango district.

"The problem has been the elephants, but now that we have been trained on how to deal with them, we have no doubt that we will reap what we sowed."

The landlocked southern African country has more than 150,000 elephants, a conservation success story that means the animals increasingly come into conflict with the growing human population.

"We have trained villagers in all methods of using chilli peppers to ward off elephants, which have always been a headache to them, especially when it comes to damaging crops," Gaseitsiwe Masunga, chief wildlife biologist for northern Botswana, told AFP.

Masunga said the chillis are best planted around the perimeter of maize and sorghum crops, acting as a buffer. If elephants wander in, the smell of the chillis crushed under their feet will drive them away.

Chillis can also be mixed with oil and infused into mutton cloth, which is then hung on a fence along the boundary of the field.

More dramatically, the peppers can be ground, mixed with dung and molded into bricks that can then be ignited when dry. The smoke emitted from the smouldering dung blocks causes elephants to retreat.

"The interesting thing about this programme is that villagers will kill two birds with one stone, as the chilli pepper will also provide a source of income for the communities as after harvest some of it will be sold in both the local and international market," Masunga said.

Another farmer, 38-year-old Tapelo Tawana, said if the programme works, his family should have enough food as well as some disposable income from the chilli crop.

"We would use the much-needed cash for the upkeep of our families," he said.

Similar schemes have paid off in Namibia and Zambia, where small farmers face similar threats from marauding elephants, said Conservation International programme cordinator Anna Songhurst.

"It worked in these countries and there is no way it can fail in Botswana as long as villagers follow what they were taught," she said.