From the desk of our Executive Director, Dr. Teri Allendorf:
In 2019, in a village near Bardia National Park, I saw a house with one door and no windows and an elephant statue in the front.
“What is this?” I asked my friend, Laxmi. I have known Laxmi since 1995 when I interviewed her about her perceptions of the park for my Ph.D.
“It’s a grain storage house for people to protect their grain from elephants eating it,” she said. The house had 16 rooms, eight on each side of a long hallway for families to store their grain in. Each door had its own lock so only the grain owners had access.
Laxmi was excited about the house because it helped to protect the grain of poorer families, who have stone and mud houses that are easier for elephants to break into and break down. In contrast, cement houses, which wealthier families have, are harder for elephants to break.
Fast forward to the winter 2021. For some reason, I wondered if the grain storage house was used anywhere elsewhere in Nepal. Looking through my collection of papers and reports and searching online, I couldn’t find examples of it anywhere else in Nepal or even the world. So I posted on social media asking if anyone had seen or knew of such a grain storage house.
I received three responses to my post. One was from Narendra Pradhan, who said he came up with the idea and wrote the grant proposal that procured funding for the house when he was employed with WWF Nepal. He said as far as he knew the house had never been evaluated or replicated.
Another response was from a major biodiversity NGO staff person in the area, who said the house was not helpful because people preferred to sell their rice instead of storing it. He also said the house was far from the mill, which meant it was too much work to take the grain from the field to the house and then to the mill.
My friend Laxmi responded that 2-3 families were using each room and the mill was conveniently located next to the house.
So a few days later, I posted that I had heard differing stories about the success of the house. This time, the NGO person who had said it wasn’t being used followed up with an update that, after asking around, he found out that, indeed, the house was being used.
I was surprised by the inconsistency of their responses. I understand that this can happen for many reasons. People can have different definitions of success. People can have information from different points in time. People can make things up because they think they should have an answer for you. But this was a relatively simple intervention, the success of which was indicated by whether or not the house was being used to protect grain.
I was also surprised by the lack of follow-up. The US Fish and Wildlife Service had supported the house. Had they not followed up? Why had no one else replicated the idea?
Often, in conservation, the focus is on a magical new alternative. Like a crop that will increase people’s income and that wildlife don’t like, like mint, chamomile, and lemongrass, all of which have been grown in Nepal to mitigate human-elephant conflict. In addition, if they can process the crop, they can create more income. But the current reality is that many of the oil distilleries built to process oils from the specialty crops are sitting unused and rusting in the buffer zone of Bardia NP.
Narendra, who originally procured the funding for the grain storage house, is still working on elephant conflict in the area primarily through two activities: awareness-building and testing the idea of cotton as an alternative crop. Overlooked in his current program, it seems, is the simple idea of a house to protect grain. He is working on both ends of a spectrum – raising awareness, which can increase people’s tolerance for and tools to deal with conflict with wildlife, and alternative livelihood activities, which are complex and often unsuccessful.
I wonder, are we paying enough attention in conservation to replicating the small successes that can make a huge difference in one family’s day-to-day life?
Maybe the ideas don’t sound that exciting to donors. Maybe the structures are too expensive? Maybe no one followed up on the grain house because it helped the people who most need it, the poorer community members, who are also the least able to voice their opinion or lobby for more support.
Another example of a simple idea is predator-proof pens that protect small livestock from wildlife depredation. I’ve seen reports that these are very successful and yet it seems they are not consistently built or maintained over time. I’ve been told that, all too often, once project funding is over, there is no support for making those successful interventions accessible to people through other types of funding, such as government programs or subsidies.
In the context of Nepal, buffer zone funds or government subsidies could continue to support successful, practical, small interventions at the household and village level. A package of interventions could be developed and made affordable for people depending on their income.
Let’s not overlook the practical, simple, activities that people can use and that are the building blocks of the complicated magical bullets.
Teri, her son Anil, and Laxmi in 2001 (left photo); Teri and Laxmi in 2019 (right photo)