Elephants Patrol Border Between Man and Beast: A Novel Technique to Save Elephants Struggling to Survive in a Shrinking Wildnerness

It’s called the Flying Squad: Four elephants and a baby named Nella. Its mission? To patrol the increasingly contentious boundary between man and wild elephants on the edge of the Tesso Nilo National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia.

“An elephant will smash a motorcycle in one fell swoop. But [a] bull elephant going head-to-head with another bull elephant, that’s a different story,” explains Adam Tomasek, from the World Wildlife Fund. “In a way, they are the first responders.”

When they meet a wild elephant that’s threatening a village and they can’t scare it away, the male elephants in the Flying Squad have to stand, lock tusks and fight, trying to drive the wild elephants away from crops before people take action.

“Without a Flying Squad, lots of times the only option is to set out traps, to set out poison,” said Tomasek.

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Tagged as: Flying Squad, Tesso Nilo National Park