Conflicts in Everything: Man vs Elephants

Man vs Elephant

From Osborn and Parker 2003, Towards an integrated approach for reducing the conflict between elephants and people: a review of current research(pdf):



Problem:

Conflict between elephants and people persists even where considerable resources have been devoted to solving the problem. This can be attributed to a range of factors, including technical faults, lack of commitment of the farmers and limited resources

An expensive ‘arms race’ can develop between managers and elephants that are able to adapt quickly to new fence features designed to electrify the parts of the fence that elephants destroy.

Most interventions aimed at reducing crop-loss come from organizations outside of the aCected community, which include government wildlife departments and external development organizations. Farmers expect the conflict to be resolved, and when it is not, often turn against the responsible agencies. Donor-funded technical solutions are often unsustainable because external agencies are reluctant to provide the high maintenance costs.

Solution:

Tests with various chemical repellents have been undertaken in a number of field situations. In Malawi, Bell (1984) conducted trials with HATE 4C, a commercially available deer repellent, on fields and found no significant reduction in crop loss.

or

The current methods to reduce conflict between elephants and farmers are either expensive or ineffective. If it is essential to bring farmers into the process of resolving conflict by taking responsibility for the problems of crop pests, then any large-scale solution that involves continuous funding from outside the community will eventually fail. We suggest that the more responsibility farmers have for crop protection, the more successful deterrence will be. The role of external agencies and wildlife managers is, therefore, to work with farmers to develop a range of management solutions for repelling elephants.

They should try adopting a peacebuilding strategy that is so widely used here in Sudan.....the peace conference. Although it would be cool to say that you resolved conflict with HATE 4C