Understanding human-elephant interactions across time is key to illuminate pathways toward coexistence

Understanding human-elephant interactions across time is key to illuminate pathways toward coexistence

Blog Article

Research on human-elephant interactions (HEI) seeks to better understand relationships between people and elephants with the goal of reducing unwanted interactions for the long-term survival of elephants in social-ecological systems.Many examinations of HEI often rely on a short temporal scale of several seasons to several years, often because of limited data availability across time.These examinations offer limited understanding of processes that influence HEI and mutual adaptations of people and elephants.In this synthesis, I present an ethnographic case study from the Okavango Delta, Botswana, where human and elephant populations have increased in the past 20 years.I use bricolage, a practice of using available materials at hand, mr robot funko to weave together diverse historical and current scholarship and primary data to understand dynamics of HEI and coadaptation across three different periods (pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence).

I show that people and elephants were coadapted in the pre-colonial period when people were highly mobile and hunted elephants with rudimentary technologies in ways that supported human development across southern Africa with minimal impact on elephants.European colonization brought sweeping changes, including through the introduction of guns and the development of the ivory trade that led to massive declines in elephant populations.Development policies that were magnified in the years following independence, including the establishment of land policies that settled communities, additionally disrupted turbo air m3f72-3-n the formally fluid nature of HEI.Simultaneously, wildlife conservation policies that coincided with dramatic increases in elephant populations shape how people perceive HEI and elephants as a predominant environmental force today.I argue that the incorporation of wider historical contexts, where necessary through the practice of bricolage, reveals coadaptation across time and offers understanding of possibilities of coexistence where people and elephants thrive alongside each other.