Human–elephant interactions in Gabon 265


FIG. 3 Perceptions of respondents regarding the monthly elephant visitation patterns and the reasons for their visits (for the latter, see text for details) and of the monthly availability of six crops, by planting and harvest. Note that the scale of the y-axes differ across graphs.


Discussion


This is one of the first studies to empirically link the perceptions of communities experiencing interactions with forest elephants with elephant presence near villages as


TABLE 1 Correlation coefficients between monthly indices of forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis presence around villages in Gabon determined from both local perceptions and from geographical locations # 500 m from villages of two collared elephants (Amelia, female; Nzamba, male) and timing of planting and harvest of six crops, as determined from the surveys.


Banana planting Banana harvest


Sugarcane planting Sugarcane harvest Peanut planting Peanut harvest Manioc planting Manioc harvest Corn planting Corn harvest Yams planting Yams harvest


Perceived 0.45


0.49 0.43 0.27 0.31


−0.56† 0.43


0.49 0.35


−0.58* 0.34


−0.10


Amelia 0.68*


0.64* 0.85* 0.17


−0.28 0.38


−0.32 0.06


0.54† 0.66* 0.57* 0.59*


Nzamba −0.29


−0.40 −0.14 −0.24 −0.25


−0.28 −0.37 −0.27


−0.26 −0.23


*, strong evidence of relationship (P,0.05); †, weak evidence of a relation- ship (0.05.P,0.1).


FIG. 4 Solutions to reduce negative human–elephant interactions, as proposed by survey respondents in Gabon.


Oryx, 2024, 58(2), 261–268 © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323000704


derived from GPS collar data (but see Ngene et al., 2009, and Buchholtz et al., 2020, for savannah elephant examples). We discuss the perceived patterns and drivers of human– elephant interactions from the social surveys, how they link to both the elephant movement data and the proposed solutions put forward by farmers, and implications for conservation in Gabon. We found that the majority of survey participants per-


ceived that crop availability around villages was the most important factor driving elephant visitations to villages in


0.29 0.28


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