CRI听力:African Wildlife Wardens Take to the Skies to Protect Elephants

Soaring above Tanzania's Tarangire National Park, the drones, with their bee-like sound, are ushering the increasingly-threatened mammals away from human encroachment.

A growing number of elephants in Africa are being killed by poachers.

But at the same time, game wardens - who are charged with protecting the animals - are increasingly being forced to bring down the animals if they're found raiding crops or wandering into local communities.

Drone technology is being adopted as a new technique for protecting elephants in Africa's national parks and nature reserves.

Nadia De Souza from the group Biodiversity and Wildlife Solutions says initial trials of the drones appear to be working.

"So far they seem to be responding really well, I mean, all of the trials that we've done so far, they've moved away from the drones really quickly whether they were in the fields or whether they were just out of the crops, so it's been pretty positive so far but we still need a lot more data to collect and be certain of the statistics."

However, Biologist David Olson says he believes it's only a matter of time before the elephants become accustomed to the drone's bee-like sound.

As such, park rangers are being trained to fly drones carrying chili powder - an efficient elephant deterrent.

"I think elephants are smart enough to know that at night when they're in the crops, feeding on water melons and corn that bees aren't swarming, I think pretty quickly they'll get used to it and that's why we are exploring the use of dropping very light covers of chili powder in the air to alert them."

Rangers taking part in the trials say the unique solution appears to be effective in moving wild elephants in a pre-determined direction.

Technical expert Jonathan Konuche says the rangers are excited about the new technology.

"It is helping a lot and the rangers are very excited about this, it's a new technology and they think it's the safest and easiest way of handling or herding elephants away from crops."

Tanzania's Mara Elephant Project, an elephant protection and conservation project, currently has 12 trained UAV pilots.

For CRI, I'm Qian Shanming.