World Wildlife Fund

A woman prepares the rope fencing with a combination of used diesel oil and chili powder.
© WWF / Philipp Goeltenboth

Farmers and elephants in northern Mozambique have been living in conflict for years. Farmers plant maize, vegetables and other foods in small garden plots often located near forested areas. Hungry elephants have learned that raiding farmers’ fields can provide them with easy food – leaving little for the farmer and his family. Farmers are being killed while trying to defend their fields and elephants are becoming the source of resentment and anger by the local communities.

A smoking chili bomb made of a combination of elephant dung and dried chili that produces a caustic smoke that drives away elephants.
© WWF / Philipp Goeltenboth

WWF has been actively working with the farmers living in and around Quirimbas National Park in northern Mozambique since its declaration in 2002 so that both animals and humans can live in harmony. Local communities asked WWF for help to instruct them on techniques to mitigate human-elephant conflict that eliminates physical confrontation, protects agricultural fields and saves lives. The number of elephants and subsistence farmers being killed from the conflict over planted food has dramatically decreased due to WWF’s innovative, but cheap and simple, chili bomb defense system, while the conflict has exploded outside of the park.

The two lines of defense exploit elephants’ strong aversion to chilies. The elephants are first repelled by a “chili cord” covered with a combination of chilies and engine oil that is strung around the periphery of the fields. If the elephants persist beyond the ropes, communities throw or ignite a concoction of chilies, water, and dung, called “chili bombs,” in the direction of the elephants. The dry “bombs” hit the ground and “explode” in a cloud of very spicy dust, which acts as an irritant that forces them to flee.

Last year 24,000 fields were planted in the park’s buffer zones and only 23 were destroyed by elephants – a reduction to less than 10 percent of pre-park levels, dramatically improving the health and nutrition of local communities.