African Wildlife & Environment Issue 77 FINAL ISSUE

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Striking the balance Elephant behaviour and society are complicated things that will no doubt continue to attract the attention and fascination of many scientists. Yet understanding and mitigating human-elephant conflict is more complicated still. Countries that must find the delicate balance between the rights of their citizens and their responsibility for conserving biodiversity should be supported, particularly by providing sound scientific evidence on both the elephant and human dimensions of the problem. Scientific findings should not be used as a club to beat countries into making policy changes, and scientists must realise that their perspectives on elephants are not the only ones that matter. Constructive engagement between policymakers, affected communities and scientists cannot happen if we ignore each other’s perspectives and real concerns. While the international media is partly to blame for making a difficult situation worse, each party can choose to either stoke the fires of conflict or douse the flames by trying to understand the other side’s point of view. Perhaps the proverbial question should not be “how do you eat an elephant?” but “how do you see an elephant?" Gail C. Thomson is a carnivore conservationist who has worked in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana on human- carnivore conflict, community conservation and wildlife monitoring. She is interested in promoting clear public communication of science and conservation efforts in southern Africa. This article was first published in Conservation Namibia and is reprinted here with permission.We thank Gail for her article and great photographs.Contact: gailsfelines@ gmail.com

research into the long-term impacts of removing individual elephants (either as ‘problem-causing’ or for income generation) on the level of human- elephant conflict, and we hope to pose some of these pertinent research questions in a future article. This is not to say that non-lethal efforts should not be attempted – they are needed just as much. Around the Boteti, education regarding how to behave when seeing elephants will reduce fear, better fencing around crops will reduce damages, and providing piped water near settlements can reduce direct competition for water. Elephants for Africa is heavily involved in helping this community live with elephants using an array of non- lethal methods – this article in no way criticises their efforts. In terms of income generation, finding different sources of revenue [ https:// news.mongabay.com/2020/09/beyond-tourism- a-call-for-business-ideas-that-protect-african- wildlife-ecosystems/] to incentivise tolerance for elephants and other wildlife that do not rely on foreign visitors (with cameras or guns) would increase the resilience of African conservation and is therefore a welcome endeavour. The various different actions one can take to reduce human-wildlife conflict are often likened to a ‘toolbox’, with each tool being needed for a different task and under different circumstances. Precluding the use of lethal methods reduces the size of the toolbox and may even render our non-lethal tools less effective. If people ask for a particular elephant to be removed, yet conservation authorities respond with an educational talk on the importance of elephants without explicitly addressing their request or trying to understand their point of view, the effort may be seen as patronising – at best! In practice, government conservation authorities need to implement policies regarding elephant management (either in terms of identifying and removing individual ‘problem animals’ and/or granting quotas for hunting elephants) that include the needs and perspectives of their citizens who live alongside elephants.

The Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) is an umbrella Association that provides a forum and mouthpiece for the broader environment sector, that can lobby with government and other parties, that can raise funds for its members and that can represent the sector. www.n-c-e.org

42 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 77 (2020)