Finding Harmony Between Humans And Elephants

How one non-profit organisation is encouraging alternative crops to reduce human-elephant conflict in Thailand

- Sarah Eichstadt

When elephants enter her farm, Roengrom “Rom” Amsamarng runs away and spreads the news of elephant presence to neighbouring farms. To Rom, a Thai farmer, elephants threaten her safety and economic livelihood. In the village of Ruam Thai, where Rom lives, elephants leave protected areas and venture into pineapple farms, damaging crops that farmers depend on for a living.

“If it’s too late at night, I won’t go out or even move,” Rom says. “If the elephant is really close to me, I won’t move, but if the elephants are far away, I will run as far as I can.”

This is an example of human–elephant conflict, a problem in all 13 countries inhabited by Asian elephants, including Cambodia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. In Thailand, human–elephant conflict, or HEC, is increasing. Research suggests this is the result of shrinking Thai forestland. Between 2012 and 2017, 45 humans and 25 elephants died through HEC, according to Thai newspaper The Nation.

Ruam Thai village is working to solve this problem. A group of farmers, researchers and volunteers is experimenting with how to make the plantations less appealing to elephants.

Most Ruam Thai village residents’ main source of income is from agriculture, and 70 percent of these residents plant pineapple. The village in the southwestern province of Prachuap Khiri Khan, about 250 kilometres south of Bangkok, shares an unfenced border with Kuiburi National Park, home to more than 300 wild elephants.

By helping farmers transition to planting different crops instead of pineapple, Bring The Elephant Home, or BTEH, is “working with elephant psychology”, as BTEH’s Thailand country director Ave Owen calls it, to disincentivise them from coming into the farms.