Lack of crucial information exacerbates barriers to mitigating human–elephant conflicts in rural Kenya
LYN N VON HAGEN* 1 ,BRUCE A. SCHULTE 2 ,TODD D. S TEURY 1,KELL Y DUNNING1 , 3 MWAN G I GITHI RU 4 ,SARAH ZOHD Y 1 and CHRI S T O PH ER A. L EP CZYK 1
Abstract Crop foraging by African savannah elephants Loxodonta africana negatively affects farmer livelihoods and support for conservation, yet affordable, sustainable and practical solutions remain elusive. To inform conserva- tion priorities, our goal was to assess the hitherto little explored relationships between farmers’ views on agricul- tural damage and the socio-economic factors limiting their use of elephant deterrents. We tested our hypotheses associated with the demographic categories of age, educa- tion level, years spent farming, gender, exposure to informa- tion on deterrent methods, farm size, village and relevant combinations of these factors by surveying 206 respondents across six villages in rural Kenya and analysing the resulting data using an information theoretic approach. Respondents were almost four times more likely to use deterrents if ex- posed to the relevant information, and almost five times more likely to do so if they had secondary education as opposed to none. Farmers with a higher level of education were five times more likely to have received information on deterrents compared to those with no formal education. Participants who had not received information on deter- rents were almost three times more likely to believe that they could implement deterrent methods. Respondents who stated that they could not implement deterrents over- whelmingly cited a lack of financial resources as the reason. Overall, we found that crucial information on reducing ele- phant crop foraging is not reaching the relevant stake- holders, and socio-economic factors such as education and exposure to information appear to limit uptake of pro- tective measures. These insights are important for develop- ing mitigation strategies and supporting the livelihoods of people affected by negative human–elephant interactions, and thus for effective elephant conservation. Our findings also have broader applications for practitioners seeking to understand barriers stakeholders face in their efforts to mitigate negative interactions with wildlife.
Keywords African elephant, agricultural damage, deterrent methods, food security, human–elephant conflict, human– wildlife conflict, rural sociology, wildlife interactions
The supplementary material for this article is available at
doi.org/10.1017/S0030605323001795
Introduction
sion of natural areas to agriculture (Young et al., 2010; Redpath et al., 2015; König et al., 2020), leading to competi- tion between wildlife and people over resources, including habitable space (Madden, 2004; Seoraj-Pillai & Pillay, 2017). Negative interactions or conflicts are particularly fre- quent in regions where rural communities live near pro- tected areas or important wildlife features such as movement corridors (Western et al., 2015; Mc Guinness, 2016; Pozo et al., 2020). One of the most common types of negative interaction involves agricultural damage (Hill, 2000; Naughton-Treves & Treves, 2005; McKee et al., 2021), whereby wildlife enters cultivated lands and con- sumes or damages crops as part of modified foraging strat- egies (Owen-Smith et al., 2010). Often termed crop raiding or crop foraging, this behaviour has been observed in a wide range of species (Krijger et al., 2017; Seoraj-Pillai & Pillay, 2017; Gross et al., 2018; Hill, 2018). However, in areas where wild elephants range, they are generally perceived as the primary cause of crop damage (Sukumar, 1990; Osborn, 2004; Mackenzie & Ahabyona, 2012). The negative impacts of elephants and other wildlife can
I
*Corresponding author,
lvonhagen@comcast.net 1College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment, Auburn University, Auburn,
Alabama, USA 2Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA 3Current address: Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources,
University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA 4Wildlife Works, Nairobi, Kenya
Received 9 June 2023 Revision requested 14 September 2023 Accepted 13 November 2023 First published online 9 September 2024.
threaten the food security of affected communities and weaken support for conservation (Raphela & Pillay, 2021; Salerno et al., 2021). Crop foraging incidents not only result in loss of livelihood for farmers but also affect human health and well-being as farmers may experience lost opportunity costs, fear and stress whilst protecting their farms (Barua et al., 2013). Negative human–elephant interactions are also a threat to conservation as some farmers retaliate against wildlife perceived as pests (Distefano, 2005; Treves et al., 2009; Davies et al., 2011). Farmers repeatedly experi- encing crop foraging may become frustrated with wildlife authorities if they feel that the importance of their liveli- hoods is not being considered, potentially reducing their
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. Oryx, 2024, 58(6), 779–787 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323001795
nteractions between people and wildlife are increasing globally as a result of continued habitat loss and conver-
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