Hottest Chili Against Indian Elephants

First in Africa, now in India. Wildlife experts in northeastern India are using a new non-lethal weapon against crop raiding and home destroying elephants: superhot chili.

Conservationists in Assam state tested against elephants jute fences ointed with automobile grease and bhut jolokia chilies (ghost chilies), the world's hottest according to Guinness Book. Smoke bombs with chili have also been tested.

"We fill straw nests with pungent dry chili and attach them to sticks before burning it. The fireball emits a strong pungent smell that succeeds in driving away elephants," Nandita Hazarika of the Assam Haathi (Elephant) Project told the Associated Press.

"The elephants would not eat the chilies because the smell would be enough to repel them. The measures would not harm the animals."

Northeast India harbors the world's largest concentration of wild Asiatic elephants: only in Assam there are 5,000 (over 20 % of the species) individuals, estimated to live in Assam alone.

But wild elephants' attack on human settlements has been increasing due to habitat loss: up to 691,880 acres (280,000 hectares or 28,000 square km) of Assamese forests have been cut off between 1996 and 2000. The attacks provoked over 600 human victims in Assam in the last 16 years and locals reacted violently. In 2001, in the Sonitpur district, 112 mi (180 km) north of the Assam's capital, Gauhati, poisoned 19 wild elephants that had destroyed crops and houses.

"We have been forced to look for ingenious means to keep wild elephants from straying out of their habitats," M.C. Malakar, the state's chief wildlife warden, told the AP.

In 2006, the hot chili method was also tested in Africa by the Elephant Pepper Development Trust (EPDT). EPDT first used the idea in 1997, in the Zambezi Valley, at the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia.

The method was first used to chase bears away in North America.

Specifically, elephants do not like capsaicin-the chemical that makes chili hot. In Africa string fences are sloshed with chili-infused grease and equipped with alarming cowbells. Briquettes of crushed chili and animal dung are burned, creating a noxious smoke that keeps hungry elephants out of fields.

As elephants in both Africa and Asia start their activity after the sunset, protecting crops is a dangerous and tiresome activity for farmers.