Introduction to TERF projects :
Human Elephant Conflict (HEC)

In Thailand, Human Elephant Conflict (HEC) has been recorded as an issue in communities around 14 protected areas. There is no national overview of the problem and nor is there a national database to record and monitor whether the instances of HEC are increasing, decreasing or staying the same at either the local or national level.

TERF Project detail

Causes of HEC

A summary of the literature on HEC points to five main causes of HEC:

  • Increasing human populations have resulted in expansion of human settlements and agricultural land into forest areas; humans have encroached into the elephants’ habitat. As a result the elephants’ habitat has reduced in size and become increasingly fragmented. (1 elephant requires between 105 and 320 km2 to find sufficient food to live, Sukumar 1989).
  • Use of forests by people, for example logging and collection of non-wood forest products.
  • Killing of elephants for ivory and meat.  Kenya and China are two countries where elephants are known to be killed for their valuable ivory, in India elephant meat is also sold (Sukumar).
  • Elephants change their behaviour and actively choose to eat in farmland.  In the Gurve region of Mozambique.
  • Insufficient food and water for elephants in some seasons.   Sukumar found that in Sri Lanka most HEC problems occurred during the dry season as in the wet season there was sufficient food and water in the forest for the elephants.