©Honeyguide Foundation

The Honeyguide team recently helped train new community members to scale up crop protection in the Randilen Wildlife Management Area. Led by Honeyguides’ crop protection expert, Lemuta Meng’oru, the team trained 200 individuals from eight-member villages on how to protect crops with the use of the crop protection toolkit. Through this training program, they were able to add 28 additional crop protection teams to the already existing 55 teams that work to protect Randilen community farms.

The crop protection toolkit is used to help ward off elephants who can destroy crops through foraging. Through the training program, the Honeyguide team is able to teach community members how to properly use the toolkits, ensuring their success without incurring additional costs for excess kits. Once toolkits are employed, elephants move away from the farms, protecting crops for local communities. Given the increase in elephant raids in 2020, Honeyguide is also working to upgrade the toolkit to ensure it is even more effective for local communities.