FFI helps elephants and people get along in Cambodia with an ingenious toolIf you can’t handle the spice of chilli, you’re not alone. Elephants can’t seem to stand it either. In fact, Fauna and Flora International (FFI) has been harnessing that bit of knowledge to help reduce human-elephant conflict in Cambodia. It has helped farmers in the country’s remote Cardamom Mountains to plant chilli along the edge of their fields. When elephants venture out from the forest towards a farm, the first crop they come to is chilli, which sends them back to their forest home.
Crop raiding by elephants is a huge issue wherever humans and elephants live side by side. The Cardamoms are particularly poverty-stricken, so losing crops can have serious implications for the livelihoods of local people.
On the face of extinction
Asian elephants are listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Habitat loss is forcing them into ever smaller forest fragments, which inevitably leads to more interaction with humans. FFI is also helping farmers to find ways to make a living that doesn’t lead them to clear the forest.
With only 10 per cent of the population of their African cousins the Asian elephant is in trouble.
Poaching for ivory and conversion of critical forest habitat to agriculture is threatening the survival of the Asian elephant in the wild. Elephants need large forest landscapes to live and conduct their normal migratory and social behaviour. Fragmentation of these landscapes through roads and development is reducing the elephant’s chances of seeing out the 21st century.
