Lucy King

Dr Lucy King is a zoologist dedicated to helping humans and elephants peacefully coexist. She is the Coexistence Director for Save the Elephants and for the organisation’s Elephant Crisis Fund. She made the groundbreaking discovery that elephants run away from honey bees and invented the unique beehive fencing system to use this behaviour to reduce human-elephant conflict.

Background

Lucy grew up in Somalia, Lesotho and Kenya and spent a lot of time in African national parks and reserves during her childhood. Looking at wildlife and camping amongst it from an early age made Lucy passionate about protecting it. For her doctorate at Oxford University, Lucy studied the use of honey bees as a natural elephant deterrent, and she discovered that elephants run away from the sound of disturbed bees. This revolutionary discovery led to a unique way to reduce the conflict between communities and crop-raiding elephants: beehive fences.

Elephants play an important ecological role as they disperse seeds, provide food (and fertilisation), and shape the environment by foraging on trees and bushes. However, elephants and humans are increasingly competing for the same space and resources, and this is resulting in more human-elephant conflict. To reduce some of this conflict, Lucy created a fence made from interlinked beehives hung on poles with a trigger system (a wire that moves the hive if the elephants touch it) that are placed around farms and helps to keep elephants away and people safe.

Lucy’s beehive fences that protect individual farms from elephant invasions have been spreading rapidly, as it is cheap and effective and keeps up to 80 % of elephants away from the farms. Unlike conventional fences, they do not block elephant migration corridors as they allow elephants to migrate peacefully between homes and farms on their way to new feeding grounds. Additionally, the bees support crop yields through pollination and the honey they produce diversifies both the farmers’ income and their food production options as honey is financially valuable, nutritious, and does not require refrigeration.

Vision and Approach

Elephants are one of the most damaging of crop-raiding animals. In Kenya, elephants are not confined to national parks and reserves, which means that interactions between them and communities can cause serious social, political, and economical issues. As a result, a lot of electric fences are being built to try to keep elephants and other wildlife away from farms and villages. However, this method is expensive and not as effective as was thought and also disrupts important natural processes such as migration.

Through her African upbringing and studies, Lucy developed an interest in how people can co-exist with wild animals. Not by fencing them apart, but by finding a way in which communities and wildlife can co-exist, Lucy looks for holistic and natural methods to keep people and animals apart where necessary.

In Lucy’s TEDWoman talk from 2019 she shares her vision and findings:

Impact of the Future For Nature Award

• The financial support of the Future For Nature Award made it possible to purchase a new research vehicle, which doubled the capacity of Lucy’s team’s work in East Africa, helping more farmers to be reached by the project.

Moving Forward

Lucy established the Elephants and Bees Research Center in 2013 which was recently rebranded as the Save the Elephants’ Tsavo Human Elephant Coexistence Center. Lucy expanded her work and developed a comprehensive manual on methods and tools that can help communities live more successfully with elephants. The Human-Elephant Coexistence Toolbox includes Lucy’s original beehive fence method and 80+ other effective tools, and has already been translated into many different languages.

"Dr King's science-based finding that elephants are alarmed by the sound of angry bees has huge practical value. Elephant-human conflicts are inevitably going to increase as human populations surrounding protected areas expand. The use of honey bees, one of the traditional livelihoods of Africa, both to provide fences and income, is one of the most exciting win-win solutions to come out of Africa for many years."

Mr. Brian J. Huntley, International Selection Commitee