Roots of peace

Kerala's forest department plants fruit and fodder trees to ease human-wildlife tensions

- K RAJENDRAN

FOR P KESAVAN, a farmer in Kerala's Vithura village, elephants are a routine menace. The animals often wander into his village located on the forest fringes of the Western Ghats in Thiruvananthapuram district, and raid his plantain crops. "For years I tried to keep them away using everything from drumbeats and howling to deep trenches and electric fences, but in vain," Kesavan says. "This year, instead of trying to deter them, I tried to befriend them by serving food in their home," he says.