Human-elephant conflict causes significant welfare harm to both elephants and humans as elephant range shrinks and encounters with agricultural communities increase.
Human-elephant conflict creates welfare harm at multiple levels simultaneously — elephants are injured, killed or stressed by retaliation while farmers face food insecurity and fear from elephant raids. Effective coexistence programmes address both dimensions: protecting crops through deterrents and providing farmer compensation while maintaining elephant populations and freedom of movement. The shrinking of elephant habitat is the root cause that makes conflict inevitable without intervention, making large-scale land protection and corridor preservation the most fundamental long-term solution.