(12 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Taita Taveta, Kenya – 6 August 2025
1. Mid of herd of elephants
2. SOUNDBITE (Kiswahili) Richard Shika, Beekeeper:
++PART OVERLAID WITH SHOTS 3, 4 AND 5++
"Even if the elephants destroy my crops, I still get to harvest honey from my beehives which I can sell. Between January and March, I harvested about 5 kilograms and between April and June I got 24 kilograms. I made more than 20,000 Kenya Shillings ($ 154) from the 24 kilograms and 12,000 Shillings ($92), from the 5 kilograms. So, you see I can educate my children. Apart from just deterring elephants, the bees give us a lot of honey that yields profit."
3. Various of elephants feeding
4. Various of Shika inspecting his beehives
5. Various of Shika holding his group’s packaged honey
6. Wide of herd of elephants
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Yuka Luvonga, Researcher At Save The Elephants:
++PART OVERLAID WITH SHOTS 6, 8 AND 9++
"One of the major causes of human-elephant conflict is because of human factors. We find, like the places or the infrastructure that us as humans we do develop, they are the ones which hinder the migratory routes and paths which elephants used to take, maybe to go for water sources or maybe to look for herbs or some certain kind of trees."
8. Various of Shika erecting a fence
9. Various of elephants
10. SOUNDBITE (Kiswahili) Getrude Jackim, Sesame Seed Farmer: ++PART OVERLAID WITH SHOTS 11 AND 12++
"Someone like me cannot fight the elephants, I cannot chase them because I am old. So now, my work is to plant these sesame seeds that elephants can’t destroy or eat. They do not like how this plant smells."
11. Various of Jackim tending to sesame seeds on her farm
12. Close of plate of harvested sesame seeds
STORYLINE:
For farmers in the Taita hills in southern Kenya, elephants are a menace: they raid crops and will occasionally injure or even kill people.
Farmer Richard Shika, 68, has had some close encounters.
He feels lucky to be alive. Almost exactly two years ago, local media reported that a 3-year-old girl had been trampled to death by an elephant in Taita Taveta county, her mother injured.
The area where Shika has his farm is almost surrounded by Kenya’s biggest National Park. The border of Tsavo East National Park is less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) to the east, and Tsavo West curves around to the north, west and south. The parks have always been unfenced, allowing animals to migrate. Increasingly, that puts them in the path of humans.
“The places and infrastructure that we humans develop hinder the migratory routes and paths which elephants used to take,” explains Yuka Luvonga, who researches human-elephant coexistence for conservation organization Save The Elephants.
Elephants eat about 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of vegetation a day, so keeping them off farms is tricky, especially if forage is scarce elsewhere.
If farmers try to chase them off, as Shika did, the elephants will sometimes turn and defend themselves. Kenya Wildlife Service and conservation organizations tracking human-elephant conflict estimate that 30-35 people are killed every year in elephant-related incidents across Kenya.
Communities will sometimes retaliate by spearing or poisoning elephants, but there are other solutions, as farmers here have found.
One of them is bees.
"Even if the elephants destroy my crops, I still get to harvest honey from my beehives which I can sell," Shika says. "Between January and March, I harvested about 5 kilograms and between April and June I got 24 kilograms."
AP Video by Zelipha Kirobi
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