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What is the context of this research?

Human-elephant conflict in continental Africa centers primarily around destruction and loss of crops. In Kenya, crop-raiding elephants are killed both legally and illegally. The little known practice of retaliatory killing and lethal management of elephants that raid crops is, next to poaching, the second greatest cause of mortality and population decline. The method used to kill is often with poison-tipped spears, resulting in prolonged and agonizing death lasting days or weeks.

A year's worth of crops can be demolished in minutes by crop-raiding elephants, and despite their precarious survival status, conflict is on the rise due to increased agricultural development, reduced habitat availability, and fragmentation of key migration corridors.





What is the significance of this project?

This proposed research has the dual effect of turning "problem" individuals into targets for conservation and demonstrating that aversive training is effective for reducing destructive behavior. Crop fields surrounding and bordering protected areas are highly susceptible to crop-raiding due to their proximity to elephant pathways and high traffic corridors. The proposed site for research includes fields near the Ol Pejeta Conservancy (OPC) in central Kenya. Two of five target individuals selected for long-term monitoring under the aims of this research proposal are still in need of GPS-tracking collars for the purpose of collecting long-term movement data. This added data will help Kenya Wildlife Service to better assess the efficacy of the method I've developed.

What are the goals of the project?

We need to determine the pre-and post-experiment movements of additional targeted African elephants identified as habitual crop-raiders. We will train wild "problem" elephants by using conditional stimulus techniques surrounding the Ol Pejeta Conservatory in central Kenya.





We need to determine the fence-breaking activity and crop-related movements of a habitual raider before and after conditioning, compare the activity of these elephants to other habitual raiders tracked during the experiment, and evaluate the efficacy of the behavioral training as a tool to de-escalate human-elephant conflict, reduce crop-raiding events, and change attitudes of local farmers toward elephants.