TWO items of news have crossed my desk, one involving the end-product use of ivory and the other protecting elephants in the wild, both are without doubt good news for these beleaguered pachyderms.
A major handicrafts chain operating mainly in Hong Kong, Chinese Arts and Crafts, has announced that it will no longer be dealing in elephant ivory. The South China Morning Post reports that the chain will from now on only be dealing with mammoth ivory, which is from long extinct animals and is still being found in large quantities in places like Siberia.
It is readily available on the market and the difference between it and modern elephant ivory is apparently quite obvious. Hong Kong is particularly important as far as ivory sales are concerned because it is the main outlet for ivory and other such products for many of China’s dealers and has become a hub for illegal ivory. The report says Chinese Arts and Crafts appears to have bowed to public pressure, which is good news indeed.
Back in Africa, where the worst ivory poaching is happening, research has come up with another way of keeping elephants out of embattled farmers’ lands. It’s bees. Apparently, despite the fact that an elephant’s hide is between two and three centimetres thick, they are much troubled by bee stings, particularly around the eyes and inside the trunk.
They are known to avoid trees where there are bee swarms, but of course they are attracted to farm lands because of the readily available and easy-to-reach food source. This, again, leads to conflict between elephants and farmers, often ending in the death of the elephant. So, perhaps bee hives are the answer.
Elephants scavenging in farmers’ fields are a major problem. A single elephant can destroy an entire crop in just one night, let alone what a herd of them can do. Traditional methods of keeping unwanted animals out of lands are often impractical in Africa. Electric fences for example, or in fact any kind of fence when it comes to a hungry four ton elephant, so something more natural and simple is the answer – bees.
The trick is to have a ‘fence’ of bee hives, about ten metres apart and slung on connecting ropes or wire. When something, such as an elephant, touches the rope or wire the hive swings, the bees are disturbed and emerge – exit the elephant.
The project has been tried in various districts of Kenya with an 85 percent success rate, and there are added advantages to the bees and their hives – the farmers’ fields are better pollinated and they can harvest the honey, either for sale or for consumption (of course, they would have to start their hive fence with honey bees).
All in all good news for elephants. Cheers!
Source: savetheelephants.org News Service.
PS: Many years ago when we seemed to be visiting Hong Kong quite often, I fantasised about getting a job on the South China Morning Post or similar. As they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I wonder if I had landed that job if I would ever have written this column for the South Coast Herald?
