Honey Bee Fence as a Biological Control Method to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict in Rautahat District of Nepal

Honey Bee Fence as a Biological Control Method to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict in Rautahat District of Nepal

Project Animal(s) : Asian Elephants
Project Category : Mammals
Project Region : Asia
Project Type : Conservation
Project URL : https://www.rufford.org/pavan_kumar_paudel/project_updates
Project is timebound? : Yes

Project Start Date : May 18, 2017

Asian elephant (Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1785) has been classified on the IUCN Red List as “Endangered” and protected by the Government of Nepal “National Park and Wildlife Conservation Act 1973”. Elephants are primarily threatened by degradation, fragmentation and loss of habitat, and poaching. In Nepal, the estimated total population of Asian elephant is fewer than 300 individuals, distributed in 2-3 small, isolated populations. Today, the species has a very small, declining population, a trend that has recently become extremely rapid and is predicted to continue in the near future largely as a result of the widespread and on-going conversion of its habitat for agriculture. Immediate danger for the species is caused by human Elephant conflict, and modification of forest through anthropogenic and natural causes, and deforestation, disturbance and inappropriate cutting and burning.

Human Elephant Conflict (HEC) Mitigation is one of the challenging issues for elephant conservation at low land of Nepal. There are various deterring methods viz. electric fence, chili bombs, firecrackers, crop raiding deterrence groups, chili and tobacco cultivation, honey bee fence method etc. has been well practiced all over the elephants ranging areas of world. King et. al. (2007); King et. al (2010) has proved that honey bee can be used as a biological control to mitigate the HEC for crop raiding African elephants . The bee sting familiarity helps to avoid the places where there is bee hives. By installation of bee hive fence with wire inter-connecting as a grid, such that any disturbance shaking the wire, lets out angry bees to attack the intruder will help to lower the HEC as well as protect crop fields from being raid.

This project will be helpful to mitigate human-elephant conflict and lead to long term conservation of the elephant in this elephant’s corridor area:

• Proposed project will be helpful to increase number of honey bee hives and will gain economic value that will be helpful to manage community forests as well to provide seed fund to local people. Moreover, it is helpful for capacity building of locals.
• Conservation awareness program such as group discussion, radio program, banner and poster presentation, etc. will be conducted to reduce the poaching and human wildlife conflict in the study area.

Project Researcher : Pavan Kumar Paudel

Project Researcher Contact : pavanreturn@gmail.com

Additional Information :

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