article · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Human-wildlife conflict presents major challenges to biodiversity conservation and causes harm to both people and animals through property loss, injury, and death. Projections of cropland density, human population density, and climatic suitability reveal how conflict pressures will change for endangered African and Asian elephants by the year 2050. Future risk, defined by cropland or population density entering the ninetieth percentile of current values, is set to increase overall. This growth in risk is notably greater under high-emissions scenarios compared to low-emissions pathways. Concurrently, climatic suitability for both elephant species is projected to decline across their extended range boundaries. Areas where climate suitability decreases frequently coincide with zones where human-elephant conflict risk is growing, indicating that managers need proactive mitigation strategies to protect elephant populations under changing environmental conditions.
Rising human populations and changing climates push elephants and communities into closer contact, resulting in crop damage, injuries, and fatalities. Mapping future hotspots helps conservationists and local authorities anticipate where clashes will intensify. Understanding these future dynamics allows planners to allocate resources early, reducing danger to rural communities and helping to safeguard endangered wildlife.
The findings can inform early-stage planning frameworks and decision-support tools for conservation bodies, spatial planning agencies, and wildlife authorities seeking to forecast conflict zones. However, the abstract describes predictive ecological modelling rather than a direct commercial product, so operational deployment would require further development into specific risk-mapping software or field management programmes.
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Human-wildlife conflict is an important factor in the modern biodiversity crisis and has negative effects on both humans and wildlife (such as property destruction, injury, or death) that can impede conservation efforts for threatened species. Effectively addressing conflict requires an understanding of where it is likely to occur, particularly as climate change shifts wildlife ranges and human activities globally. Here, we examine how projected shifts in cropland density, human population density, and climatic suitability-three key drivers of human-elephant conflict-will shift conflict pressures for endangered Asian and African elephants to inform conflict management in a changing climate. We find that conflict risk (cropland density and/or human population density moving into the 90th percentile based on current-day values) increases in 2050, with a larger increase under the high-emissions "regional rivalry" SSP3 - RCP 7.0 scenario than the low-emissions "sustainability" SSP1 - RCP 2.6 scenario. We also find a net decrease in climatic suitability for both species along their extended range boundaries, with decreasing suitability most often overlapping increasing conflict risk when both suitability and conflict risk are changing. Our findings suggest that as climate changes, the risk of conflict with Asian and African elephants may shift and increase and managers should proactively mitigate that conflict to preserve these charismatic animals.
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DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2312569121
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