Fill a condom with chili powder. Mix in small rocks and sand for weight. Add a firecracker for a bang. Launch condom at elephant. Save elephant’s life.

All it takes is one elephant rumbling through a field to destroy a family’s food supply for an entire year, so it’s no surprise that a farmer might turn to the only tool he has available—a spear.

But this elephant warning system gives farmers a low-tech way to scare these animals away from their crops without violence.

The Honeyguide Foundation, a Tanzania-based conservation group, with support from the United States-based Nature Conservancy, is training teams of volunteer “crop protectors” in dozens of villages throughout northern Tanzania to implement the system.

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