Encounters with crop-raiders by James Stevens

I have been lucky enough to have a number of different encounters with elephants. I have met them on hundreds of occasions from the safety of my car when completing research sessions. I have also bumped into them when on foot during walking safaris in South Africa and when they have been walking through our current research camp. On all these occasions I have been able to safely negotiate myself out of the situation if necessary through either staying still or backing off. A couple of weeks ago a new scenario arose….

It started off like a pretty normal day. I received a call from Mankind my research assistant at around 7am to inform me that a farmer’s field had been raided that morning by an elephant. I headed out to the farmer who I know quite well to be told the elephant had been in both his fields. I collected all my necessary data in the first field where it looked like an old male elephant had wondered through.

I then moved onto the second field which was behind the first. I entered the field which is one of the larger fields that we work with and had just put my bag down under the tree when Mankind pointed out that the elephant was still in the field. This was the first time that I had encountered elephants in a field. Normally the elephants raid under the cover of darkness and have left by morning. This proved a new challenge as there was some very upset farmers next to me watching the elephant munch on their precious crops. In most situations you avoid confrontations with large 2 tonne animals but on this occasion we had to try and move it out of the field. As a group we walked to a safe distance from the elephant and slowly tried clapping and making noise….nothing! He just carried on munching the maize patch that he was in. I then remembered I had my car so went back to get it and drove back to the field and bush-bashed along the boundary until I was about 50m from the elephant. I selected some music with a very heavy bass and cranked up the stereo whilst continuously honking the car horn….nothing! I got the impression I was playing some nice background music for him whilst he enjoyed his breakfast.

I discussed options with Mankind and returned for one last attempt. This time I pulled up alongside the elephant in the field and slowly revved the engine. A trick Mankind reminded me about. Breakfast had been disturbed and was now over. After a quick head shake he turned on his heels and slowly wandered out of the field. Success!

I now have a new found respect for all the farmers that sleep in their fields at night to keep elephants out. It is one thing to try to confront elephants from a vehicle but it is very different when doing this on foot. Through the use of mitigation strategies we hope to stop these confrontations from happening ensuring the safety of both the farmers and the elephants.