Methods for crop protection need to be financially and technologically within the capacities of the people implementing them if they are to provide long-term solutions. Community-based options for crop protection have good potential for sustainability, because they are co-developed with the farmers, and utilise locally available resources.

Like many intractable problems, there is no ‘sliver bullet’ that can address all aspects of this issue. The reasons this conflict persists and is increasing are due in part to the landscape ecology of the ecosystems of the elephant range. General issues of elephant management and human settlement patterns must be addressed if long term and lasting solutions can be found.

Over a number of years of research funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, researchers in the Zambezi Valley of Zimbabwe developed a suite of ‘low-tech’ methods that individual farmers could implement to deter elephants from raiding crops. The logic was to raise the cost of entering a field for elephants by harassing them with non-harmful methods to which they were unlikely to habituate. Central to EPDT methods are hot chillies which are used as an ingredient to intensify these simple methods in order irritate elephants, rather than injuring or killing them.

In an effort to reduce the short term impacts of crop raiding, methods that farmers could use to keep elephants out of their fields were developed and tested over a number of growing seasons. Very briefly these Community-based Problem Animal Control methods include:

1)	Developing strategies with farmers to deter elephants at night
2)	Creating buffer zones between agriculture and elephant habitat
3)	Erecting simple barriers (string fences) that farmers could hang cow bells on to act as alarms and coat with a chilli infused grease
4)	Burn chilli briquettes around the fields

These methods were further refined and then taught to farmers in other areas. By gaining some short term control of a conflict situation, farmers can at least be less antagonistic toward elephants and this is the first step toward co-existence. By growing chillies and using them as a deterrent, farmers were able to defend themselves, but they were not any better off than if they had been living in an area with no elephants.

Farmers had no market for their chillies. The Trust was set up to train farmers in these methods and to identify markets for the excess chilli grown by farmers living in elephant range.

We run training courses and advise on how to reduce conflict between elephants and people in both Africa and Asia. Participants learn about what options are available to managers and communities to address conflict issues. We are now collaborating with projects in a number of countries.
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