Where elephants and humans share landscapes, conflict is inevitable without active coexistence strategies. Effective approaches protect both elephant welfare and human livelihoods.
Human-elephant conflict creates welfare harm for elephants through retaliatory killing, problem-animal control operations, and the chronic stress of navigating human-dominated landscapes. Elephants shot for crop raiding face painful deaths; those captured for relocation experience acute stress of capture and unfamiliar territory; those that learn to associate humans with negative experiences become chronically stressed in human-dominated ranges. Preventive coexistence tools that allow elephants to live alongside humans without constant conflict remove the triggers for most welfare-compromising management actions. Beehive fence programs have shown remarkable effectiveness across Africa and Asia, protecting crops while leaving elephants unharmed and providing honey income for farming communities — an alignment of human and elephant welfare interests.