Fostering human-elephant co-existence: a classification tree analysis approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Subsistence farmers in elephant rangelands suffer food insecurity, economic losses and emotional stress from crop damage by elephants, resulting in reduced local support toward elephant conservation. To foster human-elephant co-existence in a dynamic social-ecological system, we explored the validity of Classification Tree (CT) analysis application to identify human-elephant hotspots in an effort to target approaches to reduce human-elephant conflicts. The CT analysis revealed that the most important factors affecting occurrence of crop damage were crop types, field sizes and distance to nearest road and river. From CT generated thresholds, we propose establishment of multi-criteria-based risk zones, as an alternative approach, to quickly identify and prioritize future human-elephant conflict (HEC) hotspots for improved agrarian livelihood and elephant conservation outcomes. We also explained the limitations of CT models. This study contributes to the existing theory and body of work on elephant habitat use at the human-elephant interface.