African Parks unveils Red Chilli as elephant repellant at Liwonde National Park

By Shamuda Drake

The African Parks (AP) in Liwonde, Machinga has unveiled Red Chilli as a proven solution to repel elephants from destroying farm crops in the neighbouring communities surrounding the National Park.

Red Chilli can repel elephants

This is unexpected spicy solution to an age-old challenge of Elephants that for long exerted pressure and panic in communities there.

According to a statement a group of inventive farmers at Liwonde are growing bright Red Chilli bushes that is helping to scare away the destructive elephants from their farms.

"Today, a line of bright red chilli bushes is changing everything.Elephants dislike the scent of chillies and give them a wide berth, leaving fields intact and helping create opportunity for people and wildlife to live alongside one another," said part of the statement.

For decades, each season, elephants wandered into fields, flattering crops and destroying months of work overnight.

The statement adds: "what began as a small experiment has grown into a thriving network of farmers planning, harvesting, and selling chillies."

The invention has turned a simple solution into both protection and opportunity for farmers to serve their hard earned farm produce.

The impact is serving as one action shaping an entire ecosystem.

Liwonde National Park has a large, thriving elephant population, often exceeding the habitat's carrying capacity and is creating habitat pressure and crop-raiding issues in neighboring communities.

African Parks and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) have ventured into significant management efforts like large-scale translocations to reduce human-wildlife conflict on top of the establishment of Chilli.

In addition to a chilli solution of scaring away the raids, African Parks are moving hundreds of elephants from Liwonde National Park as a source population for Malawi's conservation to Nkhotakota and Kasungu National Parks in order to balance the populations and create viable herds of wildlife.

Elephant as these could be repelled by red chilli

In 2022, 263 elephants were translocated from Liwonde National Park to Kasungu National Park to boost Kasungu's population and reduce pressure on Liwonde Communities.