Conservation opportunities and challenges emerge from assessing nuanced stakeholder attitudes towards the Asian elephant in tea estates of Assam, Northeast India

Abstract

Interactions between wildlife and people lie at the core of conservation planning in heterogeneous landscapes. Understanding stakeholder perspectives towards wildlife is a key endeavour in this regard. In particular, it can be useful to separate notional or generic attitudes towards wildlife, from those that pertain to more practical considerations at localised scales. We assessed nuances in stakeholder attitudes and underlying beliefs towards the endangered Asian elephant Elephas maximus––a wide-ranging species that needs landscape-scale conservation, while also being an animal that is both culturally revered and conflict-prone. We instrumented semi-structured questionnaire surveys using a 5-point Likert score, to 2252 respondents representing tea estate labour and management across 17 estates in the Kaziranga–Karbi Anglong landscape of Assam, Northeast India. Respondents were overwhelmingly positive (80–98%) towards elephants notionally. In our landscape, this stemmed more from cultural links and beliefs about the animal’s intrinsic right to persist, rather than utilitarian benefits in terms of ecosystem health. At localised scales, responses were more varied with issues relating to safety concerns and crop loss maximally inciting non-positive responses. Similarly, stakeholder attitudes towards elephant conservation at localised scales were varied. Elephant use of lands outside forests, for instance, incited equivocal responses. Interestingly, while safety concerns clearly limit the potential for human–elephant co-occurrence, stakeholders still believed that elephants do not harm people unprovoked; this highlights the opportunities a culture of tolerance provides for stakeholder support of, and engagement with, wildlife conservation. Ultimately, understanding stakeholder attitudes can determine our ability to encourage ‘wildlife-friendly’ behavioural change and shape human–wildlife interactions into the future.