Anti-elephant solar fence helping Assam farmers reap good harvest

A low-cost solar fence that protects standing crops on three hectares of land from depredation by wild elephants in the Mirza area of Assam’s Kamrup district boosted paddy harvest by the local farmers in the last harvesting season.

The residents of Gosaihat village near the Maliata reserve of the Palashbari Range Forest in Mirza installed a low-cost seasonal solar fence in November last year to protect the vast crop field with technical guidance from ‘Aaranyak’ and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Experts from 'Aaranyak', a Guwahati-based biodiversity conservation organisation, said the US Fish and Wildlife Service also supported the initiative.

Due to the solar fences installed in the area, crops are protected from wild elephants. The system is also facilitating man-animal coexistence.

The solar fences give a very mild shock which does not affect the elephants or humans, but once the pachyderms get the mild shock, they go away from the site, thus protecting crops.

Senior ‘Aaranyak’ official and solar fence installation expert Anjan Baruah said their team initially trained the local community of Gosaihat on solar fences management and operation.

Eventually, a low-cost community-managed solar fence was successfully installed on an experimental basis.

“The fence provided protection to the standing crop from wild elephant herds. As a result, the local farmers could harvest 90 per cent of the crop in the last season,” he said.

Baruah added, “Previously, when there was no solar fence, the farmers could hardly harvest anything as wild elephants destroyed the standing crop.”

The solar fence power machine was installed in the residence of Sukleswar Boro, a local farmer in Gosaihat.

After harvesting the crop in the last season, the local farmers led by Boro removed the entire fence, including the solar fence machines, solar panels etc., and stored them for the next season.

As per Boro, they could protect their crops from wild elephants last season and thereby realise the utility of the seasonal solar fence. They have also taken the responsibility to take care of the fence materials.

After getting good result in the last harvesting season, the local farmers this year have decided to install a seasonal solar fence covering a larger area, which includes crop areas earlier left unused due to the threat of elephant attacks.

Accordingly, the farmers of Gosaihat last week installed 1 km long low-cost seasonal solar fence using bamboo posts to protect around 10 hectares of crop land, completing the process in two days.

“This year, the farmers are expecting to harvest 100 per cent of the crop with the help of the seasonal solar fence. They no longer bother about crop being damaged by elephants outside the fence,” said Boro.

The farmers have also left some space to facilitate the movement of wild elephants while installing the fence.

Boro said the fence would be removed after harvesting the crop and stored for use in the next year as was done previously.

‘Aaranyak’, in association with other organisations, has so far facilitated the installation of 150 km solar fence across human-elephant conflict areas in Assam’s Goalpara, Baksa, Udalguri, Tamulpur, Tinsukia, Majuli, Nagaon, Golaghat, and the West Garo Hills district in Meghalaya.

There is a persistent challenge of human-elephant conflicts in the northeastern states, including Assam and Tripura, where encounters between humans and tuskers frequently occur due to habitat encroachment and resource scarcity.

According to forest officials, there have been hundreds of instances in the two northeastern states, especially in Assam, when wild elephants ventured outside the forest areas in search of food and water and attacked people.

As precaution, people who live close to the forests occasionally put up high-voltage electric fences, which also result in elephant deaths.