Testing the Effectiveness of the "Smelly" Elephant Repellent in Controlled Experiments in Semi-Captive Asian and African Savanna Elephants.

Crop-raiding by elephants is one of the most prevalent forms of human-elephant conflict and is increasing with the spread of agriculture into wildlife range areas. As the magnitude of conflicts between people and elephants increases across Africa and Asia, mitigating and reducing the impacts of elephant crop-raiding has become a major focus of conservation intervention. In this study, we tested the responses of semi-captive elephants to the "smelly" elephant repellent, a novel olfactory crop-raiding mitigation method.