Retaliation killing of elephant in the project site.

Human-elephant conflict has been age-old problems in Bhutan. The rise in human population and extension of settlement along the fringe of forest area aggravated the problems in recent year. This has resulted in fragmentation and decline of habitat quality leading to stiff competition between people and wildlife over space and resources. Consequently, stressed wild animals are forced to prey on crops and livestock for food. On the other side people suffer from loss of properties and life.

Human elephant conflict is mostly blamed for loss of rural income and its impact on the sustained rural poverty. The loss of income occurs through direct crop loss to wild animals and the opportunity cost of guarding crops. While the crop raiding by elephants is expected to follow the same trend over the years, the only way to reduce farmer’s income loss is by way of choosing correct and sustainable mitigation measures. The project will measure the efficacy of different mitigation measures and recommend for use of affordable and feasible mitigation measures. This will include some biological control measures which have not been explored in Bhutan till date.

The broad outcome of the proposed project is to understand the casual effect of human elephant conflict in the study area. Understanding the cause of conflict would invite appropriate intervention to address those issues – this would in turn be beneficial to local communities in many ways. The labour required to guard the crop will be reduced and at the same time incidence of crop raiding will reduce. The management cost of the protective measures (if used appropriately) will be very less. Ultimately, the project will help resolve human elephant conflict at low cost and high benefit to local people.