Lydia Tiller and Bob Smith co author a piece for The Conversation Africa on human-elephant conflict in Kenya.
Dr Lydia Tiller, Research and Science Manager at Save the Elephants, and Associate at the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology along with Professor Bob Smith Director, Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology have written a piece for The Conversation, Africa about work from Tiller’s PhD.
Tiller’s research was carried out on trends of elephant crop-raiding on the western border of the Masai Mara National Reserve where the human population has grown quickly, partly through new people arriving to farm. Rapidly changing land-use has led to high human-wildlife conflict.
“We wanted to understand whether, over 15 years, patterns of elephant crop raiding had changed.” Tiller writes “We collected data on incidents of human-elephant conflict between 2014 and 2015. When an elephant ate someone’s crops, broke a fence, damaged property or caused human injury or death, we recorded it. We also checked the number of elephants involved in each incident by measuring footprints and dung.”
Read the full article here.