With an estimated population of 300 individuals, Kuiburi National Park in Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand is one of the last remaining strongholds for wild elephants in Southeast Asia. (© Bring The Elephant Home)

UO Vision Glory camera traps are used to identify individual elephants engaging in crop foraging behavior and assess individual spatio-temporal crop foraging patterns. These SMS-integrated, AI-assisted camera traps will form an Early Warning System, generating real-time alerts for farmers and elephant response rangers, and ultimately reducing negative human-elephant interactions and crop damage incidents. In addition to monitoring detections outside the protected area, individual-level monitoring, behavior sampling and social network analysis within Kuiburi National Park will establish a database of individual elephants and inform individual behavior profiles that support evidence-based, targeted mitigation when specific individuals are detected in agricultural areas.

Elephants leave the unfenced protected area and damage crops and property on a nightly basis, but the spatio-temporal trends of individual elephants engaging in this behavior have never been studied. (© Dhruv Rungta)

Further, participatory workshops will equip safari guides, park rangers and local farmers with skills in elephant identification and establish a co-management strategy for the deployment and maintenance of the Early Warning System. This community-based approach supports equitable conservation management and increases social resilience through shared decision-making that addresses human-elephant conflict at the regional level.