Human and Elephant Voices Network (HEVN)

Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) is the negative interaction between human and elephant. Form of the conflicts mostly occurs in term of crop or property losses or even death and injury of both species.  Causes of the conflict are believed to be the habitat loss and degradation and these pushed the elephants to come out from the forest and contact with human. Thus, human also uses various techniques to repel the elephant back into the forests, for example, non-standard electric fences or gunshot¹.

According to Human-Elephant Conflict in Thailand Year 2020 Summary, there were eight elephant deaths from electrocutions and shot to death by four and four, respectively. Also, human casualties were 16 cases: eight deaths and eight injuries. Most of the human casualties are causes by the elephant approaching too closes. Unfortunately, villagers were also got the indirect impacts of living with elephants such as living in fear, decreasing income and feeling unsafe. This certainly aggravate the HEC intensity as feedback loop. And if it is left negligently, the conflict will be arisen as the human-human conflict which is harder to mitigate².

There were various mitigating strategies to reduce the HEC intensity with the management from many organizations including both government and non-government agencies. The managements that were done before can reduce the conflict in some degrees. However, those managements are not long-term based management, lack of systematic evaluation and monitoring, and not based on communities’ social and ecological needs. Therefore, we, the Human and Elephant Voices Network: composed of multi-level organizations ranged from community-based to governmental or non-governmental organizations and research institutions, aim to fill these gaps in management. The research will be focused mainly on the six modules of Human-Elephant Coexistence Ecosystem Approach (figure below) to strengthen the non-violent way of coexistence between human and elephant.

Objectives of Human and Elephant Voices Network

1. Research on the non-violent techniques to mitigating the human-elephant conflict
2. Empower the local communities’ capacity to manage the human-elephant conflict based on socio-ecological ecosystem
3. Conduct the human-elephant coexistence monitoring system with the sustainable and long-term co-management among the stakeholders in target areas

Research partners in Human Elephant Voices Network