“Smelly” Elephant Repellent: Assessing the Efficacy of a Novel Olfactory Approach to Mitigating Elephant Crop Raiding in Uganda and Kenya

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have presented a manuscript assessing the efficacy of a smelly repellent in protecting crops from elephant raiding. The manuscript is well written and research well designed, implemented and discussed. It also provides important insights into human-wildlife conflict management and as such is worthy of publication.

Author Response

Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript. We grately appreciate your time. 

Reviewer 2 Report

It is a pleasure to read such a well-written manuscript and to not have to accumulate a list of misspellings and grammatical errors. This quality resonates through the research which is well constructed and achieves a significant advancement of knowledge in a field (olfactory deterrents) which has shown much theoretical promise but often fails to achieve a practical result. The authors are to be commended for advancing the resolution of human-animal conflict without recourse to a lethal response against the offending animal. The figures and tables are clear and compelling in conveying the methodology and results. The discussion recognises the limitations of the study (limited replication, controls at only one site) and confounding factors such as climatic conditions on transmission and longevity of the odour stimuli. It cogently argues for further research and provides direction along fruitful pathways. I have a few minor quibbles to be clarified as follows:

Lines 243-45: The sentence refers only to fences but spraying was also used in the Ugandan study site (lines 250-54). Does the 82% reference only the bottle-fence treatment or both spray and fence?

Table 1: Under the heading Uganda and line Trial seasons the period is given as Oct 2018 – Jul 2020, a continuous block of time. My understanding is that the trials were conducted May-July and October-December which is four blocks of time. This should be clarified and does the repetition provide an avenue to address tolerance/habituation to the treatment albeit with few replicates?

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your very positive review. We really appreciate your useful comments which we feel will enhance our paper. 

Please see below our response (in bold) to your comments. 

Lines 243-45: The sentence refers only to fences but spraying was also used in the Ugandan study site (lines 250-54). Does the 82% reference only the bottle-fence treatment or both spray and fence?

We have changed the sentence to:

‘Of these incidents, 82% of elephants were deterred by either the sprayed crops or fence treatment with the consequence that no crops were eaten by elephants and no part of the fence damaged by elephants breaking through.’

Table 1: Under the heading Uganda and line Trial seasons the period is given as Oct 2018 – Jul 2020, a continuous block of time. My understanding is that the trials were conducted May-July and October-December which is four blocks of time. This should be clarified and does the repetition provide an avenue to address tolerance/habituation to the treatment albeit with few replicates?

We have made this clearer in the table. The table now highlights the different seasons where the repellent was trialled: Oct – Dec 2018; May – Jul 2019; Oct – Dec 2019; May – Jul 2020; Oct – Dec 2020

We have added a sentence in the Discussion to highlight that more research is needed to determine habituation over time, as this is a good point. The text now reads:

Although repeated use of this method over four crop harvesting seasons in Uganda showed continued effectiveness, further research is required to determine whether ha-bituation will occur over time.

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a good and interesting paper with a lot of implications for conservation of Elephants. This type of paper are wellcome for Diversity, I think. Text is clear and well written. English style and language seem good (but I am not a Mother Tongue). Results are very useful for conservation for these mammals with positive outcomes in terms of reduction of economic damagesin croplands.

I think that this ms deserves to be published after MINOR REVISIONS on Diversity. I have only minor comments and suggestions that, I hope, could a bit improve the first draft of the ms. 

First, in the study area add the geographical coordinates (lat, long or UTM).

After:

row 49-50. When authors reported the term 'conflict' I think that some more references of the theory of conflicts and its resolution should be added. See, for example: Redpath, S. M., Gutiérrez, R. J., Wood, K. A., & Young, J. C. (Eds.). (2015). Conflicts in conservation: navigating towards solutions. Cambridge University Press.

Since the authors reported a true project with problem statement, objective, solutions, points of strengths and weaknesses, monitoring and so on, I think that they should add (also in conclusions) at least a citation regarding the application of project management tools in conservation biology. See, for example, the paper on J Nat Cons: 'Unifying the trans-disciplinary arsenal of project management tools in a single logical framework: Further suggestion for IUCN project cycle development', available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1617138117302686.

In this regard, I suggest to add some sentences on the need (in the future) to apply a SWOT analysis to test the strengths and weaknesses of different options.

However a good paper and I hope that it will be published as soon as possible.

Add the role fo anonymous reviewers in the Acknowledgements.

Have a nice work.

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your very positive review. We really appreciate your useful comments which we feel will enhance our paper.

Please see below our response (in bold) to your comments.

First, in the study area add the geographical coordinates (lat, long or UTM).

We have not been able to add in the coordinates as the farms in the study area are spread out so one coordinate would not represent the whole area.

After:

row 49-50. When authors reported the term 'conflict' I think that some more references of the theory of conflicts and its resolution should be added. See, for example: Redpath, S. M., Gutiérrez, R. J., Wood, K. A., & Young, J. C. (Eds.). (2015). Conflicts in conservation: navigating towards solutions. Cambridge University Press.

We have included this reference and also the reference below.

Dickman, A.J. Complexities of conflict: the importance of considering social factors for solving human-wildlife conflict. Animal Conservation. 2010. 13, 5, 458-466.

Since the authors reported a true project with problem statement, objective, solutions, points of strengths and weaknesses, monitoring and so on, I think that they should add (also in conclusions) at least a citation regarding the application of project management tools in conservation biology. See, for example, the paper on J Nat Cons: 'Unifying the trans-disciplinary arsenal of project management tools in a single logical framework: Further suggestion for IUCN project cycle development', available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1617138117302686.

In this regard, I suggest to add some sentences on the need (in the future) to apply a SWOT analysis to test the strengths and weaknesses of different options.

We have added some text to the conclusion of the Discussion.

‘Conservationists should consider using project management tools, such as SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, which could provide val-uable insight when assessing the suitability of different conflict mitigation methods in varying contexts. This approach has been widely applied in strategic decision support for business management, but is now more commonly applied for environmental management (57).’

Add the role fo anonymous reviewers in the Acknowledgements.

We have added to the Acknowledgements:

‘Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their positive and helpful feedback on this paper.