Thai farmers launch (bee) sting operation to stop elephants
PANA, Thailand — To stop wild elephants from rampaging through their produce, farmers in Thailand put up electric fences, set off firecrackers and even switched their crops from pineapples to pumpkins, which the pachyderms don’t relish much. Nothing worked, so the villagers decided on Plan Bee.
In a pilot scheme run by the Thai Department of National Parks, farmers are deploying bees as a new line of defence, exploiting elephants’ documented fear of bee stings. The idea to play on the phobia came out of Oxford University research and has been used successfully for several years in Africa. It’s now gaining a toehold in Asia.
The problem is quite severe in the eastern province of Chanthaburi, which has thick forests near farming communities that grow rice, cassava, pineapple and rubber.
There are an estimated 3,000 wild elephants in Thailand, according to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center. And as farmers push into forests for agriculture, elephants have been forced to venture out of their shrinking habitats in search of food.