Some of the elephants will brave the railway\u2019s underpasses \u2013 but others are scared off by the traffic and noise. During seasonal migrations, hundreds gather at bottlenecks and blocked routes. Conservationists fear a proposed four-lane extension to the Mombasa-Nairobi highway could cut off their migration routes for ever.<\/p>\n
Electric fences, new roads, railway lines and growing human settlements are cross-hatching the elephant passages, blocking their way, fragmenting access to food and water, and putting them in competition with people for resources.<\/p>\n
While there are no definitive figures for the scale of the problem, researchers say it is a pattern happening across elephant rangelands in Africa as the continent develops. Northern Kenya is one of the few places with figures, which show that human-elephant conflict has overtaken poaching as the main threat to the mammals in recent years. For people and elephants, those clashes are proving deadly.<\/p>\n
Sarolie Louwapere did not see the bull elephant until it was too late. It was a normal August morning in Oldonyiro, an isolated settlement in northern Kenya, and the 19-year-old was taking his family\u2019s herd of goats to graze underneath the acacia trees. Their brown seedpods, scattered over the red soils where the semi-nomadic Samburu people make their home, are a favourite with goats and elephants. After shaking the canopy to bring more pods down, the teenager spotted the elephant just metres away. It charged, knocking him to the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bull elephant hit him on the side. It broke Sarolie\u2019s leg. Luckily, he fell into a gully so it didn\u2019t come back to trample him,\u201d says Ntoimar Louwapere, Sarolie\u2019s father, a village elder in his early 50s. His son is now receiving treatment away from home.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has changed how I think of elephants,\u201d he says, sitting on a wooden chair outside his house. \u201cAnything can happen with them. They can kill. But there\u2019s nothing I can do, because we live together.\u201d<\/p>\n Across sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a sharp rise in deaths linked to human-elephant conflict. While the exact figures are unclear, dozens of people are believed to have been killed and injured across elephant ranges, sparking an increase in retaliatory killings of the animals.<\/p>\n China\u2019s ban on the ivory trade within the country from 2018 led to the ivory price plunging and a marked drop in poaching for elephants\u2019 tusks. In 2011, when poaching peaked, more than 30,000 elephants were being killed every year in Africa for their ivory, which was transformed into piano keys and ornaments and used in traditional medicine.<\/p>\n Scientists estimate less than half that number are killed by poachers today. About 415,000 African elephants are left in the wild, with both African species now classified as at risk of extinction after population collapses in recent decades. African forest elephant numbers have fallen by 86% in three decades.<\/p>\n You can see where they have rooted out my cassava over there. There were five of them. They were very big boys Oldonyiro, home to about 3,000 people, sits at the heart of a key passage for hundreds of African savannah elephants in northern Kenya. Enclosed by steep hills on either side, the animals pass through a small corridor in the hills as they travel between seasonal feeding grounds. In April and May, they move in search of water and fresh greenery brought by the rains. Six months later, they move back.<\/p>\n Today, the primary school, church and dozens of traditional Samburu bomas \u2013 circular enclosures where people live with their livestock to defend them from hyenas and leopards \u2013 are just metres from the migration routes. Piles of elephant dung cover the ground near where children play. Sometimes, groups of 50 elephants pass by, local people say.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are threatening our lives,\u201d says the Rev Sammy Letapi. \u201cEven early in the morning, elephants are standing here. We are scared of them \u2026 Recently, we had a case of someone who was killed in this corridor, just over there.\u201d<\/p>\n When the animals pass by the settlement, they often do so at night or early in the morning \u2013 moving silently through the landscape to the waterhole on the other side of town. Conservation organisations are working with local people to keep the migration routes open, asking them not to build their homes in the middle of the elephants\u2019 route.<\/p>\n But Letapi wants an electric fence to guarantee separation. \u201cWe just want to be able to carry out our tasks. We are used to living with animals; we love elephants. We do care \u2013 if we didn\u2019t, we would have killed them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n When the rains arrive, Tsavo communities race to grow maize, lentils, sesame and other staples to feed their families over the year ahead. But now, Goshi and other elephants have such a taste for their crops that people sleep in makeshift shelters throughout the three-month rainy season to prevent the raids.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are many of them. They move around looking for something to eat. You can see where they have rooted out my cassava over there [pointing to a hole in the ground near his home]. There were five of them. They were very big boys,\u201d says Richard Shika, a 68-year-old farmer.<\/p>\n \u201cThree years ago, I was coming back from my washroom and one was here eating my maize. I started throwing rocks at it and it came at me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n But in the area, people are learning to adapt to the raiders. Shika\u2019s fields, like those of many of his neighbours, are surrounded by beehive fencing \u2013 a series of honeybee hives strung between posts \u2013 to scare off elephants.<\/p>\n Dr Lucy King, a researcher with Save the Elephants, used the animals\u2019 natural fear of the insects to promote the use of bee fencing to reduce clashes. The bees also help farmers by pollinating crops and they make money from selling the honey. Over the years, the discovery has joined a catalogue of techniques farmers use to defend their crops: chilli balls, ditches, night watchmen and bangers are all deployed to keep the elephants away.<\/p>\n One 2024 study found that beehive fencing can reduce up to 86% of crop raids during peak season if there are good rains. But the insects are sensitive to drought and were much less effective in periods of unpredictable weather.<\/p>\n Mwanajuma Kibula, Shika\u2019s neighbour, says the methods have helped maintain an uneasy peace with the animals. In a few weeks, when the rain returns, the 54-year-old and her family will spend the nights outside once again, keeping watch for hungry raiders.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the rains come, we will not sleep at night,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have to expect everything with elephants. But we would be bored without them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nRichard Shika, farmer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n