Innovation takes many forms. It’s especially satisfying when that innovation works with nature instead of against her. Examples of creative collaboration to solve environmental issues, be they unusual agricultural pest control or ways to avoid human/wildlife conflict such as this Elephant and Bee project are happy news indeed.

Some of our team live in Kerala, India – and know from personal experience the intelligence, and perseverance of elephants, when confronted with an obstacle to plants or trees they crave. This beehive fence concept is incredibly clever, taking advantage of the elephants’ natural fear of bees to keep them safe from potentially deadly conflict.

“I congratulate Dr. King as the winner of this important award. Her research underlines how working with, rather than against, nature can provide humanity with many of the solutions to the challenges countries and communities face.Dr. King’s work spotlights an intelligent solution to an age-old challenge while providing further confirmation of the importance of bees to people and a really clever way of conserving the world’s largest land animal for current and future generations.”
– UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner on Dr King winning the UNEP/CMS Thesis Award 2011

Watch the video below and click here to learn more!