Solar predator lights reducing human-wildlife conflict in Kenya

Between 2013 and 2020, Kenya spent about 1.77 billion Kenyan shillings — about $16 million —  compensating victims of human-wildlife conflict, according to the ministry of tourism and wildlife. But a new technology that uses solar energy to scare away stray wildlife could offer a solution to human-wildlife conflict in the country, freeing taxpayers from compensation costs.

The solar powered predator lights which absorb energy during the day and switch on automatically at night have been installed at homesteads and farms in southern Kenya, to scare away invading wildlife in communities living near them.

The technology is a plug and play innovation and works by sensing motion at night. It then flickers on and off, the same way a vehicle's indicator lights work, Martin Mulama, the southern Kenya landscape manager at World Wide Fund for Nature said.

“When wildlife notice the flickering they think that there are armed people keeping watch over their farms. This scares them away,” Mulama said.

Kulankash Karbolo, a farmer from Tendut village in southern Kenya, said wildlife attacks are usually perpetrated by elephants, buffaloes, lions, and leopards. While elephants and buffaloes invade crop farms, lions and other predators sneak into livestock sheds and prey on sheep and goats.

Karbolo has three acres of land where he has planted maize and beans. During a good season, he can get about eight bags of harvest per acre. But before he got the solar predator lights from WWF in 2020, he could hardly manage one bag of harvest per season due to wildlife attacks.

“They come at night. If you try to stop them from invading your crops, they will charge and attack you,” he said, remembering a neighbor who was recently attacked by a herd of buffaloes and broke an arm while trying to chase them away from his farm.

Last year, Karbolo said he hardly harvested anything from his farm due to elephant and buffalo invasions and though he lost about 20 sheep from his flock to invading lions and leopards, he said the government has not offered him any compensation.  

A 2019 report found that human population increase, high livestock and wildlife population densities, changing land use, and climate change, are the major drivers of human-wildlife conflicts in Kenya. While these conflicts are most intense during severe droughts in systems where communities, livestock, and wildlife share landscapes, they can occur in places where wildlife roam outside protected areas, the report said.

Crop raiding is the most common type of conflict, accounting for 50% of all reported cases, followed by human attacks at 27.3% while 17.6% of reported cases were carried out on livestock. Elephants accounted for the largest share of crop attacks at 46.2% while leopards accounted for the highest number of livestock kills at 7.3%.  

“We cannot do business as usual considering our population is growing. We have to put in place proactive measures that ensure people have enough spaces but also there is space left for wildlife. This is the balance we are working on,” said Mohamed Awer, CEO at WWF Kenya, adding that about 43 solar predator lights have been distributed to communities in southern Kenya, so far.

Awer said the solar predator lights are part of a Climate Change Adaptation project that WWF and partners are working on, covering the larger Mara, Tsavo, and Amboseli areas, in southern Kenya.

Funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development at a cost of €2.5 million ($2.9 million), the project aims to conserve the rich biodiversity on the southern Kenya and northern Tanzania savannah corridor, Awer said. The corridor stretches from the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya all the way to the Indian Ocean to the east.

“It is a trans boundary program. This area is ecologically connected where wildlife and communities interact on both sides of the border,” Awer said, adding that the project which started in 2020, will last for 10 years.

Karbolo got his seven solar predator lights in 2020 and has used them to fence his homestead, blocking wildlife’s invading paths to his farm and home.

He said this protection measure means that his son who is in the final grade in high school will continue with his education uninterrupted as he will be able to minimize losses and pay school fees.

However, for Nantaana Kaula, a local living in the Maasai Mara region in southern Kenya, the solar powered predator lights have not reached her home, but she would like the organizations responsible for the project to hasten the process of distributing the gadgets.

Frequent attacks on her livestock by leopards at night mean that her family has to sacrifice other comforts to keep watch over their assets. And it is not a very easy task.

“We hardly get a night's sleep as we keep watch against invading wildlife. Sometimes they refuse to go away when we chase them off using crude weapons and they can stay until daybreak,” Kaula said.