OL PEJETA, Kenya — The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.
The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.
Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect a growing human population and the wild animals that have less room to roam.
The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see whether he could break the habit.
So they put a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani's collar and set up a virtual "geofence" using a Global Positioning System that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers. They have intercepted Kimani 15 times.
Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago.
It's a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees. Basila Mwasu, a 31-year-old mother of two, lives a stone's throw from the conservancy fence.
Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She beat it back with a burning stick. Another time, an elephant killed a neighbor who was defending his crop.
Now Mwasu's two young daughters play under the banana trees without their mother worrying about elephants.
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