Hot-trunk fence for ellies

Crop-raiding elephants are a big problem in many African countries where farmland borders game parks and reserves. Subsistence farming is the way most people get their food, so hungry pachyderms who favour bananas and mealies above even lush grass in the rainfall months are a serious pest.

Unfortunately, both elephants and people pay a heavy price for this. Every year in Zimbabwe nearly 200 people are crushed or gored, and many elephants are killed. Botswana, one of the few African countries to compensate farmers for elephant damage, pays out almost R11 million a year.

Fortunately, a solution has emerged for both elephants and farmers. Dr Ferrel Loki Osborne, a scientist and conservation biologist on the Mid Zambezi Elephant Project based in Harare in Zimbabwe, has invented an elephant repellent that can be made by rural farmers. He got the idea from farmers in North America who grow Chilies, and use an extract, capsicum, to repel bears, deer and skunks.

Experimenting with pepper spray contraption first, Osborne realized this would be dangerous to the operator it the wind changed – and it required getting rather too close to the elephant. He’s now devised a multi-layered defence, starting with a cleared section around the farm to help elephants distinguish between the forest and farmland. Because the shape of most farms is haphazard, it was thought that a cleared path would help elephants distinguish between the farm and their habitat.

A planted row of hot peppers and thorny thickets of sisal come next, because elephants tend to avoid unpalatable or thorny plants, according to Osborne. Then comes the cash crop, generally cotton, as “elephants do not enjoy this plant as much as corn and bananas”. The most desirable crops are planted in the middle of the field, surrounded by flimsy pepper-coated fence made of twine. This is smeared with a mixture of grease and an extremely concentrated extract of Habanero pepper, the hottest variety available.

“You’d see elephants looking with confusion at the tip of their trunks.” Says Osborne. “If they push through the fence, they get it on their sides and try to wipe it off with their trunks. Given elephants’ reliance on smell and taste, it must hurt them much more than it would a person.” The response to this is that elephant’s always move away in search of easier, less painful fare.

As the world demand for chilies in-creases, the new recruit in the war against elephant invaders may soon also become Africa’s hottest new ex-port. Farmers in the Mozambique. Zambia and Zimbabwe region have already started growing chilies as an alternative cash crop to cotton.

Bells toll for the dugong

Living quickly as they do off the coast of Mozambique, dugongs have always been unaware of the human trouble coming in with the tide.

Mozambique’s Two Mile Reef in the Bazaruto Archipelago has been a protected marine park since 1998. However, in a country as poor as Mozambique, money can turn the tide. Since Chinese fishermen moved to Mozambican waters to fish for sharks, a Chinese delicacy, dugongs are often caught in fixed mesh nets scouring the ocean.

South African dugong expert Paul Dutton, who worked for the Endangered Wildlife Trust and the South African Nature Foundation in Bazaruto for five years, estimated that there are n mere 40 dugongs left. This is far lower than the estimated of 110 dugongs recorded by the World Wildlife Found For Nature (WWF) in 1990. “Sadly, these optimistic reports make it difficult to find support and improve management,” said Dutton.

The demise of the dugongs has not been brought about through hunting though. According to Dutton, “they get entangled in nets licensed by fishing authorities and, if caught, for instance by port captain in Vilankulo, they are eaten.” Dutton tells of a time this particular port captain tried to serve a dugong to President Chissano at a luncheon in

Inhassoro. “Fortunately, I managed to forewarn the president, and he was able to berate the captain.

Dugongs do have one ally thought: tourists. Since the end of the civil war, Mozambique has realized the economic importance of tourism, and the entire archipelago has been declared a national park by Chissano. His government has also realized the importance of total ban on gill nets, and the need for ecotourism.

“If some of the tourist income in this area could be used to promote the dugong as a flagship species, perhaps they can be spared extinction,” said Dutton.

What is a bottlenose a rare tropical whale?

Professor Vic Cockcroft of the Centre for Dolphin Studies in Plettenberg Bay has identified a 4,5-metre beach marine mammal, found at Keurbooms beach near Plettenberg Bay, as a rare tropical bottlenose whale, also known as a Longman’s beaked whale. This is only the third animal of this kind ever found.

Professor Cockcroft, who mistakenly identified the first two finds as southern bottlenose dolphins, sent tissue samples to Tasmania for DNA analysis as the material is not yet available in South Africa.

An autopsy to determine the cause of the death and to obtain more information about the whale and its lifestyle confirmed that the animal had died of a parasitic infestation. Johnny Gibson of the Centre for Dolphin Studies said: “All its major organs where infested and unfortunately the stomach was empty for bile. Its main food source could not be determined.”

“The first two finds, in Natal and Tsitsikamma, were the first proof that this animal even existed. Before 1999, only three skulls had been found, so there was no conclusive proof that what we had was a beaked whale.”

“These three whale finds, and the three skulls found in Kenya, Tasmania and Somalia seem to sugest the animal favours the southern hemisphere and the Indian Ocean,” said Gibson. “Most beaked whales are squid eaters, so these animals also probably feed on squid. However, as this is such a rare species, nothing can be said for certain.”