Elephants are so clever that they'll test the pulse of an electric fence with a stick and knock it down if it's not working.

Using electric fences to prevent human-elephant conflict is the kind of initiative Auckland Zoo's Conservation Fund has been supporting in Sri Lanka.

The zoo's newest baby, eight-year-old Asian elephant Anjalee, is set to be the latest public face of its wildlife preservation efforts.

Anjalee is due in Auckland this week after spending three months in quarantine on the Pacific island of Niue.

The excitement among zoo staff is palpable.

"They've just put so much effort and time and their lives into it for the past five years," Conservation Fund programmes co-ordinator Peter Fraser said.

The long-awaited pachyderm, who will be a companion for Auckland's existing elephant Burma, began life in the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka.

The zoo backs moves in Sri Lanka to gain more information about elephants to help inform policy and better protect them.

Last year 170 people and 250 elephants died in human-elephant conflict there, and as the country's population grows so does the problem, Fraser said.

"If an elephant raids your crop and comes into your village and kills someone you're going to retaliate, it's understandable," he said.

The zoo's Conservation Fund has invested in tracking collars so that researchers can know more about where elephants go and how they behave.

Three animals have been fitted with the devices so far, and it has another three collars ready to go.

The right information could hopefully stop a problem before it started, Fraser said.

"If an elephant's family has been travelling for generations down a certain pathway to a river, a housing settlement doesn't change it for them."

Much is being learned about how to protect crops, such as properly maintaining electric fences to keep the wily animals at bay.

Researchers have also found that if elephants are fenced out of a paddock all year round they will eventually break in, but if they're allowed to graze on the stubble once the main crop has been harvested they're not so tempted.

The other plank of the Conservation Fund's efforts is educating children that it is possible to live in harmony with the giant mammals.

For the last 12 years it has backed a programme taught in 150 schools.

"Kids have been growing up in Sri Lanka thinking elephants are the bad guys, they're big and scary and they will kill you," Fraser said.

The zoo is banking on the 'wow' factor of having Anjalee and Burma as walking wildlife ambassadors to further its education efforts at home, he said.

More than half of New Zealanders now lived in towns and cities, and keeping people connected to the environment was vital.

"If you don't care about it you're not going to look after it."
(Sunday Star Times, New Zealand)