Devastating human wildlife conflict is avoidable, says new report

Elephants can affect livelihoods and even marriage prospects. Photo:WWF-Canon/Martin Harvey

A new report reveals that better land planning could reduce conflict between humans and elephants, saving lives of both species, and millions of dollars in crop losses.

In Africa and Asia Elephants often stray into areas of human settlements in search of food, damaging crops and injuring or even killing people, which sometimes leads to retaliatory killing of elephants, threatening already vulnerable populations.

‘Common Ground’ from WWF found the most serious conflict and harm to both human communities and elephants resulted from unplanned and unregulated development. The conflict costs of this development are as much as $1 million a year for communal farmers in Nambia, and up to a quarter of the household income of poor farming families in Nepal. In Nepal the report observed an unusual social cost as a result of the conflict. Men in elephant ravaged villages are facing difficulties in marrying, as women are scared to move to villages where elephants are a problem.

‘We can go from lose-lose to win-win for both humans and wildlife, with the clearest gains coming from the implementation of effective land-use planning aimed at reducing the potential for conflict,’ says Dr Susan Lieberman, WWF International’s Species Programme Director.

In Nepalese communities where the area has more forest cover in edge areas, and less fragmented forests overall, half as much damage was caused by wild elephants. In Nambia levels of crop damage were closely related to the distance of farms from wildlife areas, with farms immediately adjacent to unfenced wildlife habitat being ‘a drain on the national economy’, to the tune of $700,000 a year in just one region.

As well as effective land planning, human wildlife conflict is reduced when rights over the wildlife are given to local communities. Wildlife rights enable communities to generate more income from wildlife, through tourism, than they suffered from wildlife losses, and in Nepal, the communities reaping benefits from the wildlife habitats were reflected with greater tolerance towards elephants.

Other important measures included innovative financial mechanisms, and field based techniques such as planting crops that are a deterrent, or less attractive to elephants.

Although elephants and humans were never meant to share land, and it is the humans that have fragmented the elephants’ habitat, Dr Lieberman believes that: ‘Local communities can both benefit economically and co-exist peacefully with wildlife. What we demonstrate here is that proper planning to meet the needs of wildlife and the needs of communities is the key to reducing deaths, injuries and economic losses from human wildlife conflict.’