14 DAY TRIAL // Experts at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) showed that it is possible to use renewable energy to curb conflicts that occur between endangered wildlife and people living in the areas close to national parks and other protect areas.
This is notoriously difficult for humans, especially in areas of the world where poverty rears its ugly head anywhere you look. Wild animals trespass on their lands all the time, and instances when people have died are unfortunately not as uncommon as you may hope.
As such, these people tend to take matters into their own hand whenever an elephant ransacks a home, or when a tiger descends on their livestock. But killing the animals is obviously not the answer.
The very reason why protected areas were set up is for the beast to have a safe haven, from which their populations could bounce back to at least a fraction of their original size.
But endangering humans is also not an option, and so common grounds need to be established, say experts with the WWF, a renowned environmental organization.
A good example of human-animal conflict is the Madi valley of Chitwan, Nepal, which is surrounded by natural parks and protected areas on all sides.
“Wild elephants ransacked my house and consumed almost all of the rice that I had stored for the coming season. My family and I could do nothing but watch, thankful that we got away with our lives,” says farmer Narad Mani Poudel.
When the WWF first attempted to mediate the “conflict,” the people of the area paid little attention to them. “They repeated a local adage, saying they are trapped in a ‘natural jail',” says expert Purna Bahadur Kunwar.
“They were not paying any attention to us at that moment,” adds the environmentalists, who works for the WWF-Nepal’s Terai Arc Landscape Protected Areas and Buffer Zone project.
With time, the WWF group made the villagers realize that tigers, rhinos and elephants need to survive too, and the experts also came up with a simple solution to the problem – build a fence.
“We worked together on a detailed plan for solar-powered electric fencing,” Kunwar reveals.
The proposal included total cost, community contribution, the possibility to leverage other funds and a management and maintenance plan for the wooden fence posts,” the WWF official adds.
“With this plan, we called a joint meeting of four Buffer Zone User Committees of Madi,” he adds.
About 14 kilometers of solar fence were installed total, and the number of accidents and incidents involving protected animals, humans and livestock dropped immediately.
“Based on this experience, we plan to replicate this achievement with three other Buffer Zone User Committees,” Kunwar argues.
“I have a vision to develop this valley as a poaching free zone. Instead of lamenting their ‘natural jail,’ now I hear people say, ‘If there is a heaven, it is Madi',” he concludes.