Technical Manual on Human Wildlife Conflict: Elephants
Publisher: UN Environment and Conservation Alliance
Author(s): Yaw Osei-Owusu
Date: 2018
Topics: Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Governance, Land, Renewable Resources
Countries: Zimbabwe
A perennial problem confronting conservation of Kakum and Bia Conservation Areas is human-elephant conflict. It is estimated that there are around 60-80 farming communities, with around 1200 households, within a 5k radius of these parks. With a successful conservation effort since the development of ecotourism and conservation of lands within the corridor, the backlash has been a continuous raiding of crops by elephants, primates, birds, duikers etc. resulting in severe food insecurity within the communities. This situation has on a number of occasions led to serious poaching, loss of farmers’ livelihoods and killing of humans.
Ensuring farmers’ livelihoods and food security through reduction of conflict between forest fringe communities and wildlife is an international agreed goal. Achieving this goal is within outreach given sufficient political will, adequate resources and an integrated response from governments and civil society. In rural areas where poor fringe communities live close to nature and are dependent on natural resources, conservation can help find equitable ecological sustainable solutions to conflicts and food security.
A range of crop protection methods have been implemented in the past, but with little overall effort. Resolving the conflict issue has become critical to the conservation of elephant population, the effective management of forests and improvement of community livelihoods. Over the past five years both conservation and development thinking have advance enormously to design and implement simple deterrents that have worked to mitigate conflicts and enhance farming activities. This manual, which is one of the products of a project implemented by Conservation Alliance in Ghana, fulfills the dreams of many conservationists to develop long-term strategy to promote the co-habitation of humans and elephants including land use planning.