Human–elephant coexistence 749 The corridor is located entirely on the land owned by
30 villages. To find a balance between village development and nature conservation, a network of five contiguous Wildlife Management Areas managed by community-based organizations was created and authorized during 2003–2012 (Supplementary Table 1). TheseWildlife Management Areas are communal land set aside bymember villages exclusively as habitat for wildlife, with the aimof enhancing long-term con- servation, supporting rural economic development and alle- viating poverty through sustainable utilization of natural resources. Wildlife Management Areas allow communities to benefit directly by entering into business contracts with the private
sector.However, theWildlifeCorridor is still threat- ened by human activities such as poaching, habitat degrad- ation and mining. Hunting tourism is the main source of private investment in the area. An investor (a hunting com- pany) inMbarang’anduWildlife Management Area provides allowances to Village Game Scouts who are responsible for chasing away elephants from farms. Each village in the Selous–Niassa Wildlife Corridor com-
prises several small farms (each 0.5–3 ha) scattered through the Miombo woodland. The main crops are maize and rice but farmers also cultivate cassava, beans, peas, sesame, sun- flowers, cashew nuts, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, bananas, millet, peanuts, pumpkins, tomatoes, tobacco, onions and soy. Elephant damage to crops usually occurs during the night or early in the morning. In the northern villages of the Wildlife Corridor, crops are usually damaged by large groups (10–50 individuals) of elephants, whereas in the south elephant groups are smaller (4–20 individuals). The estimated mean elephant population size in the 2014 dry season in theWildlife Corridor was c. 1,160 ± SE 684 in- dividuals (TAWIRI, 2015), with a higher density in the north than in the south (The African Elephant Atlas, 2017). African elephants are large herbivores (2–6 t), active both
day and night. Their food and water requirements are sig- nificant, with an individual consuming 4–6%of its body weight daily (Sukumar, 2003) in the form of grass or browse (c. 300 kg of food and 150 l of water daily). Diet is diverse, primarily grasses (including sedges), forbs, tree foliage, shrubs, bark, twigs, roots and fruits. TheNiassa and Selous ecosystems were formerly important sources of poached ivory, and ele- phant populations decreased by .75%during 2006–2016 in both ecosystems (Chase et al., 2016). Poaching was at its high- est peak in c. 2009. Since then, elephant populations have increased slightly, particularly in the northern part of the corridor (at the border with the Selous Game Reserve), with a consequent increase in crop damage by elephants.
Methods
We visited a total of 44 farms, in 13 villages, within the Corridor area and its surroundings during April–August
2016 (Fig. 1, Supplementary Table 1). To do this, we accom- panied teams of Government Game Scouts (District Scouts, anti-poaching units, SelousGame Scouts) and Village Game Scouts (Supplementary Table 1) when they were chasing away elephants from the farms and we joined the work of other organizations such asWWF (Supplementary Table 2). We only visited those farms whose crops were damaged by elephants. Visits were as soon as possible after elephants were observed (from a few hours to a maximum 2 days later). We were called (mostly by the Scouts) whenever ele- phants were reported to be damaging crops. Time spent in each village depended on the impact of elephants and the dur- ationof theGame Scouts’missions. Invillages heavily affected by elephants we only recorded a partial ad hoc sample (15– 35% of farmland based on the district damage records). In villages in which elephant damage was restricted to certain areas, we visited all the damaged farmland. The proportion of each crop affected by elephants was
estimated in the field as the ratio between the area affected (i.e. utilization) and the total area of each crop (i.e. avail- ability). Areas were estimated during the visits and from government information, using a GPS to record areas damaged and ArcGIS 9.3 and 10.2.2 (Esri, Redlands, USA). Distances to water points were also determined in the same way. The base river shapefile was provided by WWF, and this was combined in a new shapefile with information from Landsat orthophotos from June 2016 (Landsat-8, ob- tained from LandViewer; USGS, 2016). All field data were collected by MM-B. In addition to information from the 44 farms visited
(Supplementary Table 1), we also used responses to 22 human–wildlife conflict forms completed by WWF staff in November 2015 and July 2016 (Supplementary Table 2), which had the same type of information as our field data- sheets but covered different crop damage events. Multiple observers were involved in the WWF data collection.
Data analysis
To analyse crop selection by elephants we used Pearson χ2 tests. Observed values were calculated as the area damaged by elephants in each crop and the expected frequency was calculated as the proportion of each crop in each farm af- fected by elephants. Additionally, we estimated crop selec- tion using the selection ratio (wi), following Manly et al. (2002), calculated as wi = oi/πi, where oi is the proportion of the area used by elephants (i.e. proportion of each crop i with damage) and πi is the proportion of available re- sources in the environment (i.e. proportion of each crop i in each farm). Positive selection (preference) occurs when wi.1 and negative selection (rejection) when wi,
1.Thus, we classified each crop type according to its selection ratio as: low preference when wi#0.75; medium preference
Oryx, 2021, 55(5), 747–754 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319000978
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