Title: Moving away from prescriptive pachyderm palliatives: Toward an integrated assessment of farmer-elephant conflict in Gabon

Chair: Professor Bobbi Low 

Abstract: Crop-raiding by elephants poses a large threat to farmers in central Africa, where agricultural self-sufficiency is already low.  Despite overwhelming consensus on the need to reduce crop-raiding and decades of research invested, efforts have had little success.  Such efforts almost invariably involve prescriptive low-tech protection methods at the level of the individual farm, assuming that rational farmers will  adopt such methods once provided required knowledge and skills.  

However, the implicit assumption, that low-tech methods are low-cost, generally only holds if labor costs are not considered.  I develop a theoretical model to account for labor costs in addition to monetary costs when assessing costs and benefits of farm-level protection and present empirical data from observations and interviews with 426 farmers in 36 villages in Gabon.  Findings support the hypothesis that Gabonese farmers generally receive a higher net benefit from coping strategies, such as planting extra to compensate losses, than from protection strategies.  I conclude with paths toward more holistic strategies to mitigate farmer-elephant conflict in Gabon and provide recommendations for an Integrated Assessment to explore such alternatives.