As elephant habitat shrinks, human-elephant conflict increases, with welfare costs borne by both elephants and the farming communities living alongside them.
Elephants killed in human-wildlife conflict die through poisoning, snares, pit traps, or shooting — all of which cause suffering that can be prolonged. Calves orphaned by retaliatory kills suffer trauma and require years of rehabilitation. The human suffering dimension is equally real: families whose crops are destroyed face food insecurity, and those killed by elephants leave dependents vulnerable. Solutions that address both human welfare and elephant welfare — economic incentives for coexistence, effective deterrence, and rapid conflict response — are more sustainable than solutions that sacrifice one for the other. Community-managed conservation that provides tangible benefits to people living alongside elephants has demonstrably reduced retaliatory killing.