Mornoi (Goalpara District): Nearly 500 people die every year due to elephant attacks in India. This is nearly 10 times more than the fatalities caused by big cats across the country. From 2015 to 2020, nearly 2500 people have lost their lives in elephant attacks. On the contrary, nearly one-fifth of this number, that is nearly 500 elephants have also died in retaliation by humans in the last 5 years.
In the past, governments have spent crores of rupees on digging up trenches and erecting fences to dissuade elephants. Also hundreds of crores of rupees have been spent on compensation for loss of human lives. These trenches and barbed wire fences have often caused the deaths of elephant calves and thus rendering these ideas largely impractical.
It is scientifically recorded that elephants are annoyed by the honey bees. Elephants also fear that the bee swarms can bite their sensitive inner side of the trunk and eyes.
This made Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) launch an innovative Project RE-HAB (Reducing Elephant-Human Attacks using Bees) at 11 locations in Kodagu district of Karnataka on March 15, 2021.
Under the project, “Bee-fences” are created by setting up bee boxes in the passage ways of elephants to block their entrance to human territories. The boxes are connected with a string so that when elephants attempt to pass through, a tug or pull causes the bees to swarm the elephant herds and dissuade them from progressing further.
In just 6 months, this project reduced elephant attacks by over 70% in the southern state.
Buoyed by the success of its innovative Project RE-HAB in Karnataka, Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has now replicated the project in Assam. Surrounded by dense forests, a large part of Assam is infested by elephants with 332 human deaths reported between 2014 and 2019 due to elephant attacks.
On December 3, 2021, KVIC chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena launched Project RE-HAB at Village Mornoi in Goalpara district of Assam which severely grapples with elephant-human conflicts. The elephant menace here is so severe that villagers, over the last few years, had stopped cultivating their farms fearing elephant attacks. These villages have abundant production of paddy, litchi and jackfruit that attract elephants. Crop-raiding by elephants in these villages are reported almost every day for 9 to 10 months a year.
A total of 330 interspersed bee boxes will be placed at Mornoi and Dahikata villages in a week’s time to ward off elephants. These bee boxes have been given to 33 farmers and educated youths of these villages by KVIC whose families have affected by elephants. High resolution, night vision cameras have been installed at strategic points to record the impact of bees on elephants and their behaviour in these zones.
“Project RE-HAB has been a great success in Karnataka and so it has been launched in Assam with greater efficiency and better technical knowhow. I am hopeful that the project would contain elephant attacks in coming months and bring the local villagers back to their farms. At the same time, the bee boxes distributed by KVIC to these farmers will add to their income through beekeeping,” Saxena said.
Notably, Project RE-HAB is a sub-mission of KVIC’s National Honey Mission. While the Honey Mission is a programme to increase the bee population, honey production and beekeepers’ income by setting up apiaries, Project RE-HAB uses bee boxes as a fence to prevent the elephant attacks.
The project has been implemented in Assam with the support of the local forest department. It is a cost-effective way of reducing human-wild conflicts without causing any harm to the animals, the KVIC claims. The collective buzz of the bees is annoying to elephants that force them to return.
– global bihari bureau
