Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

Abstract

As human-elephant conflict (HEC) increases, a better understanding of the human dimensions of these conflicts and non-violent mitigation methods are needed to foster long-term coexistence. In this study, we conducted household questionnaires (n = 296) to assess the prevalence of HEC and attitudes towards elephants in four rural villages in Thailand. In addition, we evaluated a pilot beehive fence as a sustainable solution for HEC. The majority of the households reported seeing or hearing elephants near their property at least once a week (84.9%) and experienced negative impacts from elephants in the last 5 years, (81.0%). The beehive fence deterred 88.4% of individual elephants (n = 155) and 64.3% of elephant groups (n = 28) that approached the fence. Most elephants (70.7%) exhibited behaviors suggesting heightened attentiveness or alarm. The farm owner reported economic and social benefits of the beehive fence. By contributing to farmer income and reducing crop damage caused by wild elephants, beehive fencing may provide an important locallymanaged complement to regional HEC mitigation methods.

Between conflict and coexistence: Wildlife in rubber‐dominated landscapes

“…Although chilli‐grease fences, combined with community‐based guarding, have successfully kept elephants from fields in Indonesia, this method was no more successful than traditional methods like noise in combination with guarding (Hedges & Gunaryadi, 2010). Beehive fences, which provide a highly effective deterrence option in many African countries (King et al, 2011), have not consistently demonstrated similar efficacy in deterring wild elephants in Asia (Dror et al, 2020; van de Water et al, 2020). In the case of fruit crops or cereals, for which harvests are more seasonal than rubber, farmer collaborations for guarding crops were also found to significantly reduce damage in other areas of Asia (Nath et al, 2015).…”

IUCN SSC guidelines on human-wildlife conflict and coexistence

“…Mixed results have been observed in Thailand, with one study showing limited defensive reactions of beehives when disturbed (Dror et al, 2020) and another showing that a pilot fence had caused some elephants to be deterred when approaching it (van de Water et al, 2020). This example highlights how the same intervention concept used in different contexts (and on different continents with distinct yet similar species) may have differing results.…”

Elephants and algorithms: a review of the current and future role of AI in elephant monitoring

“…Such studies have demonstrated human-level accuracy in detecting whole-body behaviours in mice such as floating, rearing, nose-to-nose in paired individuals, and more localized behaviours such as head dipping, grooming and scratching [85,100]. Applying these methods in order to automatically detect heightened attentiveness behaviours in elephants, such as fence touching, ear flapping and swaying, and quantifying the number of occurrences and duration would be useful in evaluating and sustaining the effectiveness of boundary deterrents such as beehive fences [69,101]. Automatic behavioural detection methods may also be useful in evaluating proxies of elephant psychological state, such as relaxed versus perceived threat, at key locations such as water sources or wildlife crossings.…”

“…Video-camera traps and camera-equipped unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are offering researchers and conservationists more sustained and previously inaccessible views of elephant behaviour at high spatio-temporal resolution. Video-camera traps, which remain vital sensors for forest-dwelling elephants and cause minimal behavioural disruption, have been used successfully to classify behaviour by manual human review [69]. These systems are in the same technology class as camera traps and thus share similar methodological and logistical considerations, including camera placement, sensor sensitivity and resolution and environmental resilience [70].…”