From chilly-smeared clothes to carefully placed bee hives, farmers across Tamil Nadu are trying innovative ways to deter crop raiding by wild animals.
Tamil literature speaks about thinai pulam kaathal (field security) through paran amaithal (elevated watch towers), kavan kal (stones to scare birds) and Chola kaattu bommai (scarecrows). Bio-fencing of farms with thorny plants that scare, irritate or injure was another option. They were all used in the past.
Today, even elephant proof trenches and solar fencing which came with the scientific wave could not stop the raiders. Trenches got filled up without maintenance and solar fences became faulty. Some farmers used direct power supply to the solar fence, killing elephants and sometimes humans. Elephants then outsmarted the fences, beating them down with wooden logs, a retired forest official who served in conflict zones pointed out.
Enter, firecrackers
With fragmented elephant migratory corridors and depleted water and fodder raising conflict levels, especially in places where forest buffer zones were absent, local communities began to innovate. Farmers and villagers alike stocked up on powerful search lights and firecrackers, which are also by the Forest Department.
A changed cropping pattern avoiding jack fruit, banana, sugarcane and maize also helped reduce the conflict.
In addition, there are area-specific innovative practices: people in Kodaikanal tie up colourful old clothes to scare away wild boar and gaur, says K. Kalidasan, President of Osai – an NGO working for wildlife conservation. Such methods exist in addition to sensor-based early warning systems on elephant movement.
Some have tried putting pebbles into plastic bottles and tying them along the farm land boundary, to produce sounds when the wind blows, scaring elephants away.
There are places where villagers keep the FM radio on throughout the night, deceiving wild animals into thinking that people are present. Man-made bee hives are put up on trees along the forest boundaries to irritate and deter elephants in the Western Ghats. .
Forest officials say they have trained farmers to spray chilly powder on clothes after dipping them in used cooking oil. The oil helps the chilly powder stick to clothes that can then be placed on farm boundaries. At Sirumugai in Coimbatore, farmers use flashing LED lights to scare wild animals.
In a variation of the stink bomb, old clothes soaked in a herbal solution to produce a stench was tried out in Madukkarai and Kovaipudur areas. The NGO which propagated the technique keeps the ingredients a secret, say forest officials.
Instead of conventional vertical solar fences, Forest officials are trying out a hanging type of solar fence at Thekkampatti, where the annual rejuvenation camp for temple and mutt elephants was held.
