Living with elephants: Sharing lessons for human-wildlife coexistence and conservation across borders

Project description

The Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in India and Nepal are listed as Endangered according to the IUCN red list. These elephants often live in close proximity with human villages and farming communities in the Indian sub-continent. This leads to diverse interactions between humans and elephants, ranging from positive to negative, such as conflict related to elephants destroying crops. The key threats to elephants in the area include habitat loss and fragmentation, human-elephant conflict, poaching and other factors. Their conservation requires cross boundary collaboration and work with local communities. Elephants have important roles in local people’s cultures and traditions. Different jurisdictions have addressed the conflict in diverse ways.

This project aims to enhance human-elephant coexistence and conservation of elephants, towards sharing knowledge across regions and borders. The project will map the changes in the elephant distribution range in India and Nepal over the past 50 years and will examine how it corresponds with human population size, land use and other spatial factors that relate to the conflict.

All supervisors have substantial experience working on human-wildlife interactions and large mammals in Asia. We will collate information on human-wildlife interactions and conflict over space and time. We will survey local community members in human-elephant conflict areas and study the nature of the interactions between humans and elephants, challenges and solutions with a range of stakeholders, NGOs, and local community members to better understand their approaches to addressing and reducing conflict. This will be compared across ecoregions, communities and boundary areas where elephants interact with humans. This combined approach will enable to advance our understanding of how to reduce conflict and embed human culture into elephant conservation efforts.

Outcomes

The project will enable to enhance human-wildlife sharing of space and reduce conflict in India and Nepal while taking into account both ecological data on elephants and human perceptions and cultural factors. Collaborating with industry, NGOs and government, the project will enhance cross boundary collaboration and will provide evidence about the change in conflict in space and time for better management and conservation planning. This will help understand how local communities can reduce conflict with elephants and enhance coexistence that supports both humans and wildlife.

Essential capabilities

Wildlife and conservation knowledge, spatial mapping skills, GIS

Desireable capabilities

Wildlife and conservation knowledge, spatial mapping skills, GIS, modelling, social science using surveys

Expected qualifications (Course/Degrees etc.)

Honours or Masters in Conservation Science/Geography/Environmental Sciences/Ecology/dual degree of conservation science/ecology and social science/similar