Unlike man, who as the italian musician Franco Battiato sang ‘is the most domesticated and stupidest animal’, in the Kingdom of the Animals there are ancient and well-defined roles and rules that establish margins of safety, power and freedom and allow them to take countermeasures, protect themselves and relate. It is said that wilderness is also a cruel, ruthless world, but compared to that of human beings, at least everyone knows from the start who the villains, the violent and the strongest are, no one kills for pleasure or frustration, no one takes possession of other people's property except for pure survival, and above all, no money is made.
All things that seem trivial and obvious, but which each time help us to understand how if man too were to make use of such precepts, and had not forgotten that he is still an animal, he could get back to living better and in tune with the Earth and his fellow creatures.
The incipit on the damage of anthropisation is to tell the story of the Kenyan farmers who, tried and harmed by the conflict with animals, due to the urbanisation of the country, have to work hard to find methods (which are in the end ancestral, if we look closely) to defend their work on which their survival depends. And it is the animals that save them!
After years of invasions by elephants of cultivated fields and private property, particularly in the so-called migration ‘corridors’ between the two national parks of Tsavo and Amboseli, a project by the organisation ‘Save The Elephant’ is solving the problem and at the same time giving farmers an additional source of livelihood. And it will also solve the problem of the killing of so many elephants, considered guilty of destruction, as if they do it on purpose...
Bees and honey, this is the recipe found by Save The Elephant, as it writes on its website:
‘The ‘Elephant Bees’ project is part of Save the Elephants‘ Human-Elephant Coexistence Programme,’ explains the organisation, which began operations in Sagalla, in the Tsavo West area. ‘The use of beehive fences as a natural deterrent to elephants helps protect farmers and farmland. The idea is based on our ground-breaking research that uses elephants‘ fear of African bees to help reduce crop damage and minimise further instances of human-elephant conflict’.
So, elephants stay away from the fields and change their routes, but at the same time, beehive enclosures help create a social and economic boost for farmers through pollination services and the collection of ‘elephant-friendly honey’.
These are all things that our civilisation, which once knew how to coexist with animals and knew by heart the habits, the correctives, the traditions and all the dynamics of coexistence with man, has forgotten, thinking that it is the master of the world, as well as being smarter.