A fight for the land

By Mesh Moeti

A security guard at Etsha Junior Secondary School, Thihupe Dithinde spends his free time in a field just outside the village, where he runs a horticultural project along the riverbed. He raises fruit trees such as guava, mango and peach, as well as a wide variety of vegetables like rape, sweet potato, and cassava. In the last quarter of the year, he grows cereal crops

These days, Dithinde finds himself invited to workshops as a resource person to give testimonial about a new initiative being pioneered by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks. He is one of the five farmers that have volunteered to pilot a new method that the department hopes will address the human-elephant conflict.

Gaseitsiwe Masunga, a Senior Wildlife Biologist and Head of Research Division in Maun, observes that if the human-elephant conflict is not resolved, the Okavango Delta Management Plan’s aspirations would not be realized. He draws this link between the communities’ poverty and degradation of the delta; people strip the delta because of poverty, and they are poor because elephants destroy their crops.

In an effort to address the human-elephant conflict, ODMP project financed a consultancy to find measures to mitigate the conflict. The consultant identified a Zimbabwe-based NGO that has successfully used chilli pepper to deter elephants from crop fields, and suggested that the method be replicated in Botswana.

There are three ways to employ the chilli pepper in this exercise. The first is to grind it and mix the powder with oil. Then pieces of mutton cloth are soaked into the mixture and hung around the field’s fence. The mixture emits an irritating smell that elephants cannot withstand. This is the method that Dithinde currently uses, and he testifies that since he hung the cloths, elephants do not approach beyond 100 metres.

The other method is to mix ground chilli with wet elephant dung, and then dry the bricks. If sufficiently dried, the bricks emit an irritating smoke when lit. The challenge of the brick method” is to direct the smoke in the direction of the elephants.

The third technique is to plant the chilli pepper inside the parameter of the fence so that the plant acts as a buffer between the crop and the elephants. It acts in two ways. When it ripens, it can be irritating to the approaching elephants. Even more effective is when the elephants eat the hot fruits.

Following on the testimonies of Dithinde and other farmers, who began using the method last year, earlier this year the department identified crop fields that are frequently affected within the main elephant movement corridors to roll out the method to them in the form of a large-scale experiment. Thirty crop fields, which are the hot spots, have been identified in Seronga, Gumare, and Shorobe.

There is a danger that what starts off with good intentions might have undesired effect. The chilli plant is exotic, and is likely to spread. Evidence suggests that it can crossbreed with other members of the Solana ceae family.

“We shouldn’t delay implementation, but at the same time we should be careful. We have engaged one officer to look into how the plant spreads and the risk it poses to the delta,” says Masunga.

Since it is only limited to crop raids by elephants, the chilli pepper method addresses only one part of the problem. It does not deal with predators – lions, crocodiles, leopards, and hyenas – which are the scourge of livestock owners, a nomadic lot that follows water supplies and pastures.

The frequency of livestock’s encounters with predators follows the grazing patterns. During the rainy season, farmers move their animals to the sandveld because there would be enough water in the pans, and that happens to be the time when there are fewer encounters with marauders. In winter, when the pans dry, the cattle movement is diverted towards the floodplains, where there is high concentration of predators.

Phapa Babupi, a Senior Wildlife Warden in Gumare, observes that the high frequently of encounters between livestock and wild animals results from the farmers’ tendency to prefer free grazing, instead of keeping constant watch over their cattle.

“If they could kraal their cattle at night, this problem would decrease,” he says.

One of the issues that came out during the consultancy to determine mitigating measures to handle the human-elephant conflict was that compensation had led farmers to neglect their fields. One suggestion was that recompense should be gradually phased out so that farmers begin to “own” the problem. Babupi suggests that the communities lack the education to appreciate wildlife as their resource, and not “government’s animals”.

Mosepele Matheosa, ODMP focal person in Etsha, already notices a change in that direction.

“We are a farming community that was never taught ways to minimize conflict with wild animals. For instance, some people unwittingly grew crops in the elephant movement corridors. But now we appreciate that wildlife is an important resource, and that as a community we stand to benefit from tourism. That is going to change the way a lot of people in this area view wildlife, especially elephants,” says Matheosa.