Bees halt hungry elephants eyeing crops
Mohua.Das @timesgroup.com
31.01.2021
After several failed attempts, Dhanesh Parashar, a 36-year-old cashew farmer from Dodamarg in Sindhudurg district, has finally found a new ally in his struggle to keep free-ranging elephants from feasting on his crop: honey bees. Yes, elephants — the largest animals on land — are afraid of bees. So afraid that the tiny insects are now helping farmers ward off elephants that are capable of wiping out a year’s harvest in one night.
A ‘beehive fencing’ initiative in affected villages spanning 200 hectares of the Tillari forest land — a conservation reserve in the Dodamarg-Sawantwadi range for elephants that had wandered into Sindhudurg from Karnataka almost two decades ago — is bringing relief to local farmers who have desperately tried to thwart them — beating drums, bursting fire crackers, tying chilli ropes — with little success.
Bee hives serve as a fence at a cashew plantation in Sawantwadi’s Dodamarg
No comments:
Post a Comment