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this study area, and we identifiedmanioc and banana as the most widely planted crops and those in which elephants most commonly foraged, as also reported in other studies (Fairet, 2012; Nse Nkoghe, 2019). However, elephants were also perceived to forage in other crops such as yams and sugar cane. There was a general consensus that elephants fed on crops at specific times of the year (February–May and August–November), although this was also reported at other times (albeit it at a c. 50% lower rate). The two elephants had markedly different patterns in
their interactions with people. The visits of Amelia were positively related to the planting and harvesting of most crops (10 of 12 crops assessed, significant for six of the 12) defined as attractive to elephants by survey participants. The significant connection with banana harvesting and planting and the cultivation of all other crops in August and September implies a compelling attraction to villages during these periods. However, Nzamba’s visits were con- sistently negatively correlated with the planting and harvest- ing of most crops (10 of 12), and most strongly so for the
banana (R =−0.40) and manioc harvest (R =−0.37). Although there was a general agreement between the em-
pirical elephant visitation data and participant perceptions, the two elephants did not respond to crop availability in the same way: one elephant appeared drawn to periods of high human activity and high resource abundance (the planting and harvesting periods), whereas the other appeared to avoid these periods. Previous research has highlighted that elephants show consistent differences in their movement responses to anthropocentric disturbance and seasonality (Blake et al., 2008; Bastille-Rousseau & Wittemyer, 2019; Beirne et al., 2020;Wall et al., 2021), which is in part because of sex differences in movement behaviour. The same could be true here: the elephant drawn towards the availability of crops is female (Amelia), whereas the male (Nzamba) showed a lower affinity for crops, perhaps because male elephants are more likely to have larger tusks and are targeted more by ivory poachers. Nzamba’s village visits were slightly more nocturnal than Amelia’s, perhaps in- dicating greater caution (Gaynor et al., 2018); when follow- ing elephants for another project, we have also found him to be fearful of human scent and presence. These differences could also represent different foraging tactics, with Nzamba visiting many villages frequently, less predictably and for shorter durations, whereas Amelia is more predictable in her movements and stays longer in each location because of the lower threat of poaching that she faces and the need to provide for her offspring. The differences observed could also be because of reproductive tactics, with the larger home range of Nzamba reflecting a search for potential mates (Vidya & Sukumar, 2005). Additionally, the use of a 1-h resolution of location fixes, as common in other studies, could mask crop visitation by Nzamba between fixes.
Even at this local scale it is clear that cautionmust be ex-
ercised in generalizing results from individual elephants to broader mechanisms of human–elephant interactions with- out collaring larger numbers of both sexes. The majority of forest elephant collaring initiatives to date have focused on protected areas, often far from human settlements (Beirne et al., 2020), but forest elephants occur across almost all of Gabon (Laguardia et al., 2021), and 85% of potential forest and savannah elephant habitat across Africa lies outside current protected areas (Wall et al., 2021). Consequently, we recommend that future collaring targets elephants that might specialize in foraging in and around villages outside protected areas. Only then will we be able to determine whether the tactics adopted by the male and female in this study are consistent with other individuals in other locations and what proportion of elephants regularly use crops. During the course of our surveys some participants indicated they could recognize the individual elephants who foraged in their crops. Such local knowledge should be combined with GPS collar data in future initiatives to identify elephants that consistently visit crops. Understanding how many elephants visit crops and how
often they do so is potentially important for assessing the effectiveness of conservation interventions designed to reduce such visitation. This is relevant to the second most frequent proposal by survey participants for reducing elephant visitation (after the proposal that the govern- ment finds a solution), to kill elephants that approach villages. Knowledge of numbers visiting and frequency of visitation would allow us to determine whether this proposed solution would be appropriate. If a low number of elephants consistently forage in crops, culling these specific individuals might be a solution to protect local live- lihoods without adversely affecting elephant conservation. However, if a high number of elephants visit crops, even infrequently, sustainable culling might be both impossible and ineffective. The third most frequent proposal was compensation for
lost crops. Gabon, like many other countries, lacks stan- dardized assessment guidelines for compensation (Shaffer et al., 2019). If Gabon were to scale up compensation, care would be needed to avoid related problems faced else- where (Shaffer et al., 2019). Electric fencing was the next most frequently proposed solution. One of our study villages had a large-scale electric fence, built by the national park agency shortly before our fieldwork. In the years following installation the fence suffered from low maintenance and ultimately stopped working. This resulted in elephants finding ways to circumvent the fence and enter the planta- tion (Graham et al., 2009;Mutinda et al., 2014; Shaffer et al., 2019), eventually resulting in the death of one person. There have been recent efforts to implement smaller-scale fencing, including in some of our study villages, but their efficacy over time remains unknown.
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
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