Human–elephant interactions in Gabon 267 Only five interviewees proposed a halt to logging as a
resolution to human–elephant conflict, despite 34 intervie- wees stating that logging is a driver of the conflict. Perhaps people perceive the economic benefits of logging to out- weigh the costs of human–elephant conflict, perceive stop- ping logging as politically impossible or perceive it to be too late to mitigate the damage done by logging. For example, large moabi Baillonella toxisperma trees, a species cate- gorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (White, 1998) because of overexploitation, the fruits of which are eaten by elephants, have disappeared from logged forests near villages. Changes in forest ecology beyond logging were not mentioned by survey respondents but are also occur- ring: in nearby Lopé National Park there was an 81%decline in tree fruiting during 1986–2018, associated with an 11% decline in forest elephant body condition during 2008– 2018 (Bush et al., 2020). The spatial and temporal dynamics of ivory poaching and how elephants respond to this have also undergone change. Studies comparing levels of human–elephant interaction in villages with logged and unlogged surrounding forests need to be conducted to examine the relationship between logging and human– elephant conflict. Of the seven survey respondents who perceived conser-
vation policy as a driver of human–elephant conflict, four came from a village on the banks of the Ivindo river, close to the town of Makokou. This village is the closest of our study villages to Ivindo National Park headquarters and, of the villages in our study, has the most frequent interaction with park personnel. The section of the National Park close to this village is also contiguous with the forest around other villages along the national highway. It is thus possible that the National Park may not have differing effects on con- flict across these villages but rather that local perceptions of the park–human–elephant interaction vary. This would contradict findings from a study in northern Congo that showed perceptions of elephants to be most positive in the village with the strongest conservation presence (Nsonsi et al., 2018). Both human–elephant interactions and solu- tions to any conflict can have effects on how conservation efforts in general are perceived and thus responded to, and effectively reducing negative human–wildlife interac- tions remains a key challenge for the conservation not only of forest elephants but of the wider biodiversity of the Congo Basin rainforest. The purpose of our study was to determine when and
where perceptions of negative wildlife interactions corre- spond with actual visitation events and which factors (e.g. crop availability) might drive these perceptions. We identi- fied that the degree of agreement between perceptions and actual human–wildlife interactions depended on the iden- tity of the elephant and its movement patterns. This could help future studies to determine the behavioural profiles of the elephants responsible for crop damage and to make
more effective decisions about crop protection and elephant conservation in Gabon.
Acknowledgements We thank Nicholas School of the Environment of Duke University for financial and logistical support in preparing the study and in administering field surveys in the villages aroundMakokou; the village chiefs and rural peoplewho encouraged the publication of this study; the Institut de Recherche en Ecologie Tropicale within the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique etTechnologique for permission to conduct research in Gabon; the Agence National des Parcs Nationaux and Duke University for permission to use the elephant collar data; Carole Mbamy for her help with fieldwork; and the Navjot Sodhi Conservation Research Award for their recognition of this work.
Author contributions Study design: all authors; fieldwork: WM; data analysis: WM, CB, GZLF; writing: WM, CB, GZLF, JRP.
Conflicts of interest None.
Ethical standards This research abided by the Oryx guidelines on ethical standards. We obtained authorization to conduct research in Gabon through the Institut de Recherche en Ecologie Tropicale within the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (N\degree AR0057/18/MESRS/CENAREST/CG/CST/CSAR and N\de- gree AR004/20/MESRTT/CENAREST/CG/CST/CSAR). We followed the principle of free, prior and informed consent at both the community and individual
levels.Communities gave oral prior and informed consent during meetings before we conducted any research; individual respon- dents gave oral consent in response to awritten prior and informed con- sent statement that we read to them. Respondents understood that we would publish anonymized data and explicitly asked us to name their communities in all research publications.
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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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