Baraza Recap
With Dr. Kim Valenta, University of Florida
Dr. Kim Valenta is assistant professor at the department of Anthropology, University of Florida. She is an evolutionary ecologist who is looking at co-evolution, sensatory ecology, and conservation of tropical animals and plants. Her research interest includes the interaction between wild plants and Animals and how that can be affected by human activities. So far, she has conducted researches in Madagascar, Uganda, and South Africa. Her publications include “The Ghost Fruit of Madagascar: Identifying Dysfunctional Seed Dispersal in Madagascar’s Endemic Flora.” Biological Conservation (co-author, 2020); “Research Stations as Conservation Instruments: A Tiered Analysis of Community Benefits and Conservation Engagement from the Makerere University Biological Field Station, Uganda.” Professional Geographer (co-author, 2019); and “Annual Cycles Dominate Reproductive Phenology of African Tropical Trees.” Biotropica (co-author, 2018).
Her baraza talk was titled, “Sensory Ecology of Fear: A New Approach to Mitigating Human-Elephant Conflict,” in which she shared her findings, and proposed new models, and strategies to mitigate human-elephant conflict in and around Kibale national park Uganda.
According to Dr. Valenta, Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) is a big issue in Africa and Asia. Approximately 30% of large mammals caused human injuries and fatalities are attributed to elephants. In Uganda, Dr. Valentine informed noted, elephants are a big problem for local substance farmers in and around the Kibale protected areas. Besides attacking humans, elephants cause food security problem—a single elephant can effectively erase food security for a family, even a village. Humans, as a result, tend to retaliate, which may include the killings of elephants. Talking to people in the affected areas, Dr. Valenta realized, people did not seem to support wild animal conservation projects in protected areas, mainly because of elephants. Dr. Valenta’s project, therefore, was intended to find strategies and models to mitigate the HEC.
So far, according to Dr. Valenta, scare-shooting and bee fences are the most effective and widely used strategies in the area. While scare-shooting could scare elephants away, the ingress of bees into their sensitive noses make elephants innervated. However, they are inaccessible, and labor, maintenance, and cost-intensive to individual farmers—not to mention the security concern in the area that makes using guns problematic.
Dr. Valenta’s expressed that her interest was to experiment if the predator’s odor could help deter elephants from invading human habitat and causing damage. Dr. Valenta proposed a new mitigating strategy using the Giving Up Density (GUD) approach. According to the GUD approach, one can quantify and analyze fear by measuring a given animal’s (where predation cues exist) leftover. GUD has been widely used to scare away visual-oriented wild animals. Since Elephants have poor visual sensory, Dr. Valenta and her team ran a new GUD model by using fresh lions’ feces as olfactory predation cues. According to the video she shared, the elephants, even those kept in the local protected area and had no exposure to lions, reacted to the smell by avoiding the area even if food items the elephants liked were placed in the area.
Dr. Valenta described the three steps that her team used to identify and synthesize the predator-specific odors. First, using headspace sampling and chromatography, they identified three important organic compounds (dimethyl disulfate, phenol, and indole). Then, using phenol and indole compounds, they synthesized predator-specific odors similar to fresh lion’s feces. In her video, Dr. Valenta showed that elephants participating in the experiment reacted to the fresh lion feces and the concentrated indole and phenol compound in the same manner.
As she summarizes her talk about her experiment, Dr. Valenta proposed the production of a synthetic compound consisting of concentrated indole and phenol since it is difficult and risky to access fresh lion feces and keep it fresh for so long. As Dr.Valenta informed the audience, both indole and phenol are cheap and could last longer. This strategy is at a trial stage, and she hoped if it succeeded, it could ensure elephant conservation and health and wealth security for humans. Her team’s ultimate goal is to develop a safe, cheap product that could be used in the moment of conflict and scare away Elephants.
However, Dr. Valenta is concerned that phenol, indole, and dimethyl disulfate could be dangerous for humans’ and elephants’ health if used in concentrated forms. Therefore, she proposed a careful application of the compounds, such as a static odorant release method instead of a spray. Meanwhile, as Dr. Valenta announced, she and her team are working on developing a less dangerous compound.
Recap written by Yekatit G. Tsehayu