An African elephant forages in Masai Amboseli National Park in Kenya.
Fighting an elephant from destroying crops at night, raiding grain houses and sometimes killing people are nothing new for the farmers in Africa. Now, they have developed an unusual weapon to keep the pachyderms away — that neither injures the animals, nor affect the crops — chili peppers!
The non-lethal method – using chili peppers — gives farmers a cheap and readily available means to keep the elephants away. They make deterrents like briquettes of crushed chili and animal dung – the ‘Chili-Dung Bombs’. These burned bricks create a noxious smoke to keep hungry elephants out of the maize, sorghum and millet fields.
The idea is first muted by Loki Osborn of the Elephant Pepper Development Trust (EPDT) based in Cape Town, South Africa. He said,
I then brought this technology (pepper spray) to Africa [in 1997]… But it was just too expensive, so I started getting farmers to grow their own chili.
