Human-elephant conflict including crop raiding creates welfare challenges for both elephants and farming communities, requiring solutions that protect both.
Human-elephant conflict welfare involves both the welfare of individual elephants killed or injured in conflict situations and the wellbeing of farming communities whose livelihoods are threatened by crop raiding. An elephant killed by a farmer protecting crops suffers an acute welfare harm; a family that loses its entire crop to elephants suffers an economic welfare harm with serious food security implications. The welfare solution requires addressing both dimensions simultaneously: protecting farmers' livelihoods through deterrence and compensation while reducing elephant mortality through community support for conservation. Programs that make elephants economically valuable to local communities through tourism and compensation schemes have proven more effective than conservation approaches that impose costs without benefits on resident communities.