Mobile electric fences can fight human-wildlife conflicts

Francis Kokutse, in Accra, Ghana  

Francis Kokutse is a journalist based in Accra and writes for Associated Press (AP), University World News, as well as Science and Development.Net. He was a Staff Writer of African Concord and Africa Economic Digest in London, UK.

With a recent study confirming the reality of Human-Wildlife conflicts as a result of conservation efforts, Gabon must be hailed for taking the  lead to build Mobile Electric Fences (MEFs) to fight off the country’s elephants from encroaching on farmlands. Hopefully, other countries engaged in the conservation of their forests will take note to control these conflicts.

The MEFs use a high-voltage and low amperage system, that allows low impedance, to send a pulsing shock that allows the animal to back away without it being a lethal shock. With this, animals that would otherwise go to encroach on farmland are kept at bay.

Gabon has come out as one country that is paying a heavy price in its conservation effort, because the very elephants they are protecting have started destroying crops belonging to subsistence farmers. Thus, it has become imperative that they find a way out. It is for this reason that the country’s ministry of water and forests  together with the conservation group, Space for Giants, built the MEFs.

The mobile electric fencing programme was  funded by Perenco, TotalEnergies, and Maurel and Prom. It has also received funding in the pilot phase from Assala Upstream, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Vaalco, the Elephant Crisis Fund, the Elephant Cooperation and The Nature Conservancy.

The Gabonese have given credence to the study on the human-wildlife conflicts which the authors said, as climate change progresses and human populations expand, adapting management strategies to account for shifts in the location and intensity of human–wildlife conflict risk will become increasingly important. 

It is for this reason that they used their study to explore how climate and land use change is likely to alter climatic suitability and conflict risk with African and Asian elephants, adding that their study provided valuable insight for management of conflict with these species under a shifting climate regime.

With an estimated 95,000 elephants within its borders, Gabon has become the only country in the world dealing with human-elephant conflict on a national scale, with elephants present in 47 out of 48 administrative departments.

To protect the farmlands, they have been able to achieve  their 2023 annual target of 500 MEFs installations, benefitting 4,815 people throughout nine provinces. This marks a significant step forward in mitigating human-elephant conflict in Gabon. But it should not be just Gabon providing answers to a problem. Other countries facing the same conflict must start taking steps to provide these MEFs to help their farmers.

The authors of the study, “Effects of climate, land use, and human population change on human–elephant conflict risk in Africa and Asia”, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), said their result suggest that, “climate change and shifts in human population density and crop patterns will likely shift and exacerbate human–wildlife conflict risk with both Asian elephants and African savanna elephants.” They said despite a conservative approach in the study, they observed a net increase in conflict risk under their projections, with a greater increase under a high-emissions rocky road scenario, which suggested stronger climate change impacts will lead to a larger increase in conflict risk pressures for African and Asian elephants.

The researchers  examined  the  overlap of changes in climatic suitability and conflict risk,  and  found that decreasing suitability most often overlaps increasing conflict risk, adding that, there is a net decrease in climatic suitability for both Asian and African elephants in 2050, with a larger decrease under the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP370)  scenario defined  for African elephants. The SSPs are climate change scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes up to 2100 as defined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report.

“Research on African elephants is more mixed, with some studies suggesting that conflict decreases with decreasing habitat suitability, while others suggest the opposite. While this study examines climatic suitability rather than habitat suitability, climatic suitability is a component of habitat suitability and may have similar trends,” they added.

The researchers said they considered total cropland including all crop types. Yet, rice, maize, and wheat are particularly favoured by elephants, and the future distribution of these crops may influence conflict locations, adding that, they did not examine seasonality in their analysis as the conflict drivers explored represented  yearly or multi-year means, but conflict with elephants is known to be more common during the rainy season when crops are mature.

It is for this reason that the Gabonese government took the necessary steps to protect farmlands, with the MEFs.  In a comment, the Gabonese minister of water and forest, Maurice Ntossui Allogo, said the human-wildlife conflict, and more specifically,  “the Human-Elephant Conflict, has been growing at a phenomenal rate for over a decade, and is contributing to the increasing impoverishment of rural populations who make their living from agriculture, while at the same time exposing them to the risks associated with the presence of elephants in the vicinity of their villages.”

Eric Chehoski, Space for Giants country director Gabon, said they installed  500 MEFs  in 2023 and will continue to roll out fences to protect affected farmers throughout 2024. “The demand is strong. There is a real cry of distress on a national scale because of human-elephant conflict. Fences need to be part of a multi-sector effort to improve agriculture and the economy of rural Gabonese. Our goal is food security and actively participating in these rural communities’ social and economic development. This is the best way to guarantee the protection of the critically endangered Forest Elephant.”

In order to strategically distribute MEFs throughout the country, Space for Giants set up four bases in 2023 in four of Gabon’s nine provinces: Haut-Ogooué, Ngounié, Ogooué-Ivindo and Ogooué-Maritime. These worked to not only install the fences but also to monitor their effectiveness and to train local farmers to assist in their successful maintenance and implantation.

The initiative has been warmly welcomed by the local communities. Nadia Moussavou, a beneficiary  in Kafélé village, Estuaire province, said: “For almost eight years, we fought elephants. There were moments when you could hear them lurking behind the house. Every night, the routine was to rise from sleep to bang on the cans and barrels. They wreaked havoc on our crops, and we struggled to replant what they destroyed. But since the electric fence was installed, the situation has changed. Now, we can consume all that we harvest. We plant and sell, and it aids us in providing for our children.”

With the experiences of these farmers, it is clear that the government has solved the otherwise devastating situation that might arise with the farmers killing the elephants or allowing the animals to go on the rampage to create food insecurity. With the success of the Gabonese experience, other countries must take steps to build these MEFs early so that they do not have to wait for the situation to get out of hand before they start to look out  for what to do. If there is a better time to put these plans in place, it is now. The fact is conservation has come to stay with us, but it should not lead to the creation of a problem that would eventually be beyond control.

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