African and Asian elephants increasingly come into conflict with human settlements as habitat is fragmented, causing welfare harms to elephants including injury, poisoning, shooting and capture.
Elephants in conflict zones face acute welfare risks including shooting, poisoning and snare injury alongside chronic stress from habitat fragmentation. Social disruption from death of matriarchs has lasting effects on herd welfare and cohesion. Effective non-lethal conflict mitigation protects both human livelihoods and elephant welfare simultaneously.