The elephant corridor has been largely made possible by private ranchers, who offered large portions of their farms to let the jumbos through. In return, the ranchers expect the beasts to keep off their farms. “We have allowed the corridors through, it stops the elephants from breaking through our fences and destroying our farms,” said Martin Dyer, a floriculture manager with Kisima farm. Like several other large scale farms and private ranches that lie between Mount Kenya and Nagre Ndare forest Reserve, Kisima has offered 150 acres of land for the elephant corridor. Besides bringing a ceasefire to an expensive man-wildlife conflict, the elephant corridor might just rake in extra cash for private ranches on its path, as tourists flock in to watch the jumbos pass by. There is one little problem though. The jumbos might easily refuse to use the underpass. After all, they are only, well, elephants…
A 28-kilometre electric fence is expected to confine the jumbos within the 50-metre wide corridor. But at the underpass, the corridor narrows down to six metres, and the jumbos, known for their bullish stubbornness, might just decide to break through the fence onto the tarmac. Either that or the beasts might abandon the trip altogether, or seek a route through the wheat farms. “This will be their first experience, we are not quite sure they will chose to go through the underpass or not,” said senior warden Godfrey Wakaba. And in the absence of elephant traffic cops, wildlife experts hope two ingenious ideas will tempt the jumbos to obeying highway rules and sticking to the underpass: vanilla essence and elephant dung. Some clever jumbo expert has hinted to Mount Kenya Trust that the big beasts love the aroma of vanilla essence. Accordingly the trust plans to spread some on the underpass, hoping to lure the beasts into using the passage. This, and a spread of elephant dung along the corridor, they hope, will convince the jumbos to keep off the road, and stick to their underpass. Whether it will work or not, the elephant corridor, in general, and the elephants highway underpass, in particular, marks a milestone in reducing a raging conflict between Mount Kenya elephants and farmers.