Bees are helping Thailand’s elephants and farmers to peacefully coexist

Beehive fences can reduce crop damage by Asian elephants and generate supplemental income for farmers in Thailand. As such, they have the potential to prevent violent conflicts between people and the world's largest land animals and establish new forms of peaceful coexistence, according to a study published August 20, 2020, in Conservation Science and Practice.
The study was conducted in Kaeng Hang Maeo district of Chanthaburi province in Eastern Thailand, an area of high human-elephant conflict, consisting of farmland surrounded by Protected Areas. The results of this pilot study indicated that over 60% of the elephant groups and over 85% of the individual elephants were deterred by the newly installed beehive fence. The elephants that came close to the beehive fence showed typical signs of increased alertness and uncertainty and often slowly backed away. The farm owner reported a strong reduction in crop damage after the beehive fence was installed, as well as additional benefits, including the supplemental income from honey and honeybee queens.

This study was a collaboration of Bring The Elephant Home Foundation, the Phuluang Wildlife Research Station, Project Dragonfly of Miami University, the Future for Nature Academy, the Elephants and Bees project of Save the Elephants and global citizen scientists.

For more details, please check:
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.260
or https://bring-the-elephant-home.org/project/bee-the-change/

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