Human - Elephant Conflict

Of all the wild animals, the destruction brought about by elephants is the most pervasive for their wide ranging behavior, fidelity to their home range, large appetite, propensity and ability to destroy properties. Asian elephants are particularly attracted to food crops because they are more palatable, more nutritious and have lower secondary defences than wild browse plants (Sukumar 1990).

This is perhaps why the crop damage by elephants is reported to be the one of the most widespread issues and thus has been a root cause of human-elephant conflict across the elephant range countries. For example, an elephant eats around 200 kg of food per day (Sukumar 2003) and a single elephant can destroy a hectare of crops in a very short time; a small herd can decimate a farmer's livelihood overnight. Often,the people who suffer these attacks are already economically and nutritionally vulnerable, and the loss of crops and livestock can have grave impacts on their income and food consumption.

Such attacks can also lead to human injury and/or death. For example, the records show that in India alone, about 150 - 200 people on average were killed by elephants each year during 1980 – 2000 (Sukumar 2003). Hence, the field reports across the elephant range countries both in Asia and Africa describe local antipathy to elephants beyond that expressed for any other wildlife. This animosity is an ominous sign for future survival of the elephants, especially in the context of increasing trend toward a decentralized wildlife management throughout the elephant range countries

Owing to this, it becomes imperative to raise public tolerance of elephants, and to do so the management should first try to find answers to the questions such as, why does humanelephant conflict occur? How serious is the impact of conflict on the livelihoods and lives of people? How can we protect vulnerable individuals from the costs of conflict while maintaining elephants for regional and global benefits?

Some of the answers to these questions can be found in our report "Common Ground - Solutions for reducing the human, economic and conservation costs of human wildlife conflict (PDF - 3,74MB)"