Summary

Human-elephant Conflicts (HEC) are a main concern in rural areas of elephants ranging states. In Zimbabwe, rural communities suffer from living alongside the largest elephant population (Loxodonta africana) in the world. Population growth, both on humans’ and elephants’ side, increases needs and conflicts for space and natural resources, and this phenomenon will probably keep on expanding. For both development and conservation purposes, it is urgent to find sustainable and efficient low costs solutions in order to mitigate HEC. The innovative approach of this project was to test and document the long-term deterring effects of the manual and automatic versions of the chilli dispenser, with the final objective to implement a 'virtual boundary effect’ between rural settlements and protected areas. Two exploratory studies were conducted in very different contexts. Elephants demonstrated different kinds of direct and long term responses, suggesting that they progressively associated the deterring action to the conflict place. However, a true 'boundary effect' could not be highlighted in these two studies. We suggested that the success of this kind of approach is strongly correlated to the context of experimentation and the attractiveness of the resource.