Sean Augustin New Straits Times 3 Sep 12;
CONFLICT MITIGATION: Need to find ways for human-elephant coexistence, say experts
PUTRAJAYA: HUMAN-ELEPHANT conflict (HEC) in the peninsula has been rising steadily since 1998 because of continued loss of elephant habitat, which force the pachyderm to encroach onto plantations in search of food, water and mates.
Elephants living on the fringes of forests which border oil palm, rubber and banana plantations are the most affected.
The conclusion was reached in a paper published by the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) biodiversity and conservation division officer Salman Saaban and University of Nottingham School of Geography Assistant Professor (tropical conservation ecology lab) Dr Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz last year.
Elephants raiding crops have caused huge financial losses to plantation owners and statistics suggest an increase in the number of cases between 1998 and 2009.
In 1998, 791 cases were recorded while 1,108 incidents occurred in 2009 or an average of 898 cases a year in the period.
Nine people lost their lives to elephants in the peninsula between 2001 and last year.
Campos-Arceiz, who also heads the research group, Management and Ecology of Malaysian Elephants, said HEC was inevitable when people and elephants occupied the same landscape.
Elephants, he said, preferred to live in the borders of forests, which were near human settlements or plantations and the conservation of elephants would always lead to some degree of crop raiding and conflict with people.
"The only way to eradicate completely the conflict is by removing all the elephants or all the people. Neither option is desirable," he said, adding that the tolerance to damage by elephants was lower in Malaysia than in countries like India and Sri Lanka.
"If we want to conserve elephants in Peninsular Malaysia, we need to transform HEC from 'human-elephant conflict' to 'human-elephant coexistence'."
The mitigation of the conflict, he said, required action on both the elephant and the humans.
Understanding the behavioural and ecological factors that led elephants to destroy crops could reduce the amount of damage caused, he said, citing the example of people living near Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India, who avoided planting crops in corridors heavily used by elephants.
"We have to find our own model as the agriculture here is different. That is why the University of Nottingham and Perhilitan are working together to understand the local characteristics of HEC."
He added that alternative methods to mitigate the conflict, such as insurance schemes that could provide compensation to farmers whose crops were destroyed by elephants, should also be considered.
