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tolerance for coexisting with wildlife (Naughton-Treves & Treves, 2005; Kansky & Knight, 2014). Traditionalmethods to deter elephants include patrolling,
guarding (Killion et al., 2020), lighting fires, erecting fences constructed from locally available materials (Kassilly et al., 2008; Osipova et al., 2018) and using devices to scare elephants (Gilsdorf et al., 2002). However, these often achieve only limited success as elephants can habituate to sounds or the presence of humans, and learn to overcome fences (Hoare, 2012; Mumby & Plotnik, 2018; Gross, 2019). Information on deterrent methods is often provided by NGOs or wildlife agencies, which usually operate with lim- ited funding and resources (Folke et al., 2005; Noga et al., 2016; Galvin et al., 2018). Additionally, such traditional ap- proaches often require human presence to deter elephants, which can be dangerous for farmers. Modern deterrents can be more difficult to implement
because the required materials are often not available locally and/or are expensive to purchase (Vogel et al., 2022). How- ever, methods using electric fencing, chili (Parker&Osborn, 2006; Hedges & Gunaryadi, 2010; Chang’a et al., 2016), beehives (King, 2010), solar lights (Adams et al., 2020) and metal fencing (Von Hagen et al., 2021) may achieve greater efficacy as they involve recurring negative stimuli. Furthermore, such methods require no human presence when elephants are present, making them safer and freeing up farmers to fulfil their other duties. Successful designs for deterrents consider elephant physiology, behaviour and cognition (Mumby & Plotnik, 2018), and the socio- economic limitations of farmers, to create mitigation techniques that are also resistant to elephant habituation (Naughton-Treves & Treves, 2005; Dickman, 2010;Schulte, 2016).
The attitudes and behaviours of farmers towards ele-
phants, conservation initiatives and the uptake and use of elephant deterrents have been examined in several regions in Africa (Graham & Ochieng, 2008; Noga et al., 2015; Vogel et al., 2022). However, the socio-economic factors that determine whether or not farmers decide to implement deterrents have not been fully explored. Ageing tends to make people more risk averse (Okun & Siegler, 1976; Dohmen et al., 2011), yet decision-making is often affected by local culture and can be highly variable (Rieger & Mata, 2015). Thus, older farmers may be hesitant to try new techniques or crop types but have often accumulated significant local knowledge of elephant movements and behaviours (Buchholtz et al., 2020). Education levels are highly variable amongst rural farmers (Noga et al., 2015), and higher education levels can positively affect farmer productivity and the adoption of new farming techniques (Oduro-Ofori, 2014). Understanding the factors that affect farming decisions is important to improve elephant conser- vation and management efforts, and provide benefits to farmers.
Given the gaps in knowledge about farmer decision-
making regarding deterrent implementation, the threats to livelihoods of rural farmers in Kenya and the need to con- serve threatened African elephants, our goal was to examine the relationships between socio-economic factors and crop damage by elephants. We developed three a priori hypoth- eses: Firstly, we hypothesized that age, education, exposure to information on deterrents and farm size would be posi- tively associated with deterrent usage by farmers and that most would use traditional methods (deterrent-use hypoth- esis). Secondly, we hypothesized that most rural farming households had not been exposed to information on miti- gating the impacts of crop foraging but that, amongst those who had, education would be positively correlated with receipt of any such information, particularly on fencing (deterrent-exposure hypothesis). Thirdly, we hypothesized that most farmers who believed that they could not imple- ment deterrents (even if they had the relevant knowledge) would be constrained by limited economic resources and that only education level would be positively correlated with farmers who believed that they could implement deter- rents (economic-barriers hypothesis). The evaluation of these hypotheses will inform conservation planning strat- egies for agencies aiming to improve food security for farm- ers whilst conserving elephants.
Study area
The Kasigau Wildlife Corridor lies between Tsavo East and West National Parks in south-eastern Kenya (Fig. 1) and forms part of the Greater Tsavo Ecosystem. African savan- nah elephants Loxodonta africana are frequent crop fora- gers in this area, as are other herbivores such as the eland Tragelaphus oryx, and they are a source of conflict between community members and wildlife officials (Litoroh et al., 2012; Githiru et al., 2017). The region is home to the largest elephant population in Kenya, consisting of c. 15,000 indi- viduals (Waweru et al., 2021), and many elephants use the Corridor to move between the two national parks (Omondi et al., 2008; Ngene et al., 2017). Rukinga Wildlife Sanctuary (Rukinga) is one of the community ranches in the Corridor and is operated by Wildlife Works. Villagers in these areas are mostly subsistence farmers, and their income is c. KSH 1,500 (USD 15) per person per month. In years with lower crop yields 39% of the population drops below this income level. The area is characterized by a biannual rainfall pattern of rainy and dry seasons, and has been suffering from ongoing periods of drought (Kasaine & Githiru, 2016). We selected villages surrounding the Sanctuary to test
our hypotheses, focusing on those that shared a boundary with the Sanctuary (where interactions occur often), were within 1 h drive of the centralized base in Rukinga (for
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
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