Their
taste for nutritious plants, combined with their
tendency to travel, often brings elephants into conflict
with humans. Throughout Asia, wherever elephants are
found, it is not unusual for them to eventually wander
out of the forest and onto cultivated fields in order to
munch on the delicious crops that humans have planted
there.
photo M. Noonan
Farmers go to a great deal of effort to stop
elephants from entering their fields. They
fence their fields and sometimes dig ditches and
moats to discourage elephants. They often watch
over their fields in tall guard towers like the
one depicted at right, and when elephants
approach, they shoot off firecrackers to try to
scare them away.
But hungry elephants are difficult to
discourage. They easily knock down fences and
they often find ways to cross moats. Given
enough time, they even get used to
firecrackers. As a result, elephants are
unfortunately sometimes shot by farmers as a
last resort.
You can
hardly blame the elephants. All they know is what their
instincts and taste buds tell them. However, even a
small herd of elephants will create a disaster from a
human’s point of view.
This
sums up an essential problem in elephant conservation—a
problem that is true for so many animal species. When
land gets put to human use, it becomes unavailable for
use by most wild animals.