Coexistence

When Habitats Collide: Farming and Elephants at the Edge of Kuiburi National Park

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By Lauren Sutton

It’s late evening in Ruam Thai village, just outside Kuiburi National Park in Prachuap Khiri Khan province, Thailand. On my laptop screen, camera trap videos flicker to life: an elephant (Elephas maximus) moving slowly across farmland, a farmer checking fields with a flashlight, the quiet tension of life lived at the forest’s edge.

Camera traps capture nighttime elephant movements through farmlands bordering Kuiburi National Park

This is what I have seen when assisting PhD researcher Sateesh Venkatesh to analyse camera trap footage from farms surrounding Ruam Thai. The village, established by the government, sits like an island, surrounded on three sides by national park. Families live clustered in the centre, while their fields spread outward, bordering the unfenced national park, it’s a layout that leaves farms vulnerable – and elephants know it.

From Pineapples to Elephants

Kuriburi was declared a national park in 1999, protecting around 169 km2 of forest and wildlife (Charuppat, T., 1998). Before that, much of the land had been cleared for pineapple plantations. Pineapple is one of Thailand’s major exports: it grows year-round and provides high returns for farmers. But it also proved irresistible to elephants. Sweet and abundant, pineapples drew elephants out of the forest and into people’s fields, setting the stage for human-elephant conflict that continues today (Srikrachang, M. and Srikosamatara, S., 2005)

Alternative crops (citronella and lemongrass) trialled in Ruam Thai farmland, beside Kuiburi National Park.

Exploring Alternatives

As part of the alternative crops project, Trunks & Leaves and Bring The Elephant Home partnered in 2021 to research crops unpalatable to elephants. PhD student Sateesh Venkatesh, under the guidance of Trunks & Leaves founder Dr. Shermin de Silva, researches elephant behavior using technologies such as drones to map farming areas, trail cameras to detect elephant presence and behavior, and audio recorders to monitor conflict as elephants enter agricultural lands at field sites in both Thailand’s Ruam Thai and around Udawalawe National Park in Sri Lanka.

The wonderful Bring the Elephant Home team in Ruam Thai with Lauren (holding BTEH sign) as she volunteered, analysing trail camera footage.

Owen and colleagues (2024) report that lemongrass and citronella are among the most promising alternative crops: elephants generally avoid them, and they offer multiple market opportunities – selling fresh at local markets, dried for higher prices (or processed in teas), or distilled into essential oils for premium pricing and products such as artisan soaps.

Yet challenges remain. Producing oil requires large volumes of raw material and costly equipment. To sell products internationally, farmers also need FDA (Food and Drug Administration – a U.S. regulatory agency) approval and stable buyers. Without reliable markets for these alternative crops, many farmers may feel pressure to return to pineapples, with their familiar low market prices and challenges such as hormone chemicals and pesticides that are hazardous to farmers’ health, even though pineapples increase the risk of crop raids as both the fruit and sweet leaf bases are highly attractive to elephants.

An Emerging Challenge: Gaur

While elephants remain the most visible and impactful species raiding crops, they are no longer the only concern alongside Kuiburi National Park. Farmers report that gaur – Bos gaurus, large wild cattle that also roam the park, listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list – are becoming just as problematic, and in some cases more dangerous. Like elephants, gaur are drawn to easy calories in fields, trampling and consuming crops. But they can also be unpredictable and aggressive, posing direct safety risks to people who encounter them at night.

This widening conflict highlights a bigger truth: when farms border protected forest, it is not just one species but entire communities of wildlife that interact with people. 

World Habitat Day: Lessons from the Forest Edge

This year’s World Habitat Day gives us the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of habitat. Too often, habitat is imagined as something separate – national parks and reserves over here, villages and farmland over there. But Ruam Thai shows that habitats overlap. The forest is home to elephants and gaur, but it is also the backdrop to farmers’ livelihoods. When the line between the two blurs, both sides feel the pressure.

Protecting wildlife habitat is not only about preserving forest inside park boundaries. It also means supporting the people who live alongside those boundaries – ensuring that their farms are viable, their families safe, and their economic futures secure. Without this balance, conservation becomes conflict, and coexistence slips further away.

A group of four elephants in a grassy wild vegetation within the national park, near Ruam Thai village, with lush greenery in the background.
A group of four elephants in a grassy wild vegetation within the national park, near Ruam Thai village, with lush greenery in the background.

Building paths to coexistence: What can help?

Science and monitoring: Camera traps and farmer observations provide crucial data where and when wildlife moves, helping to design better strategies.

Community leadership: Farmers must be central to decisions about land use, crop choices, and protection measures – as it is their livelihood that is impacted.

Support through donations and funding: Organisations such as Trunks & Leaves and their partners like Bring The Elephant Home are working directly with local communities to reduce conflict and promote coexistence. Supporting these initiatives – whether through donations, advocacy, or spreading awareness – provides the resources needed to expand research, farmer support programmes, and conflict-mitigation efforts.

A Call to Action

As I scroll through more videos from trail cameras, I see the daily balancing act in Ruam Thai: elephants searching for food, farmers striving to protect their fields. On this World Habitat Day, their story is a reminder that habitats are shared, not separate. The health of Kuiburi’s forests cannot be measured only by the wildlife within; it must also include the wellbeing of people at its edge.

If elephants and people are to coexist, we must commit to solutions that protect both wild habitats and human livelihoods. That means supporting alternative crops, strengthening community resilience, and recognising that thriving habitats are those where both people and wildlife can live.

References

Charuppat, T. (1998). Using LANDSAT Imagery for Monitoring the Changes of Forest Area in Thailand. Royal Forest Department Bangkok. 121 pp.

Owen, A., van de Water, A., Sutthiboriban, N., Tantipisanuh, N., Sangthong, S., Rajbhandari, A. and Matteson, K. (2024). The Role of Alternative Crop Cultivation in Promoting Human-Elephant Coexistence: A Multidisciplinary Investigation in Thailand. Diversity, 16(9), pp.519–519. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/d16090519.

Srikrachang, M. and Srikosamatara, S. (2005). Elephant crop raiding problems and their solutions at Kui Buri National Park, southwestern Thailand. Natural History Bulletin of the Siam Society, 53(1), pp.87-109.

Shared History Ties Humans and Elephants: A Tale of Two Nations

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By Sateesh Venkatesh – PhD student, UCSD

The air is fresh, there is a light dew on the leaves, and the first shafts of the morning sun pierce the tree cover as our team heads out to the field. These calm mornings in the field typically start the same way, but they disguise the complexity and challenges faced at night by many of the farmers we are off to meet. Mornings for these farmers mean an interlude between nights spent defending their crops from elephants and days of hard work maximizing the production of the same crops.  

Thailand sunrise
Thailand sunrise
Sri Lanka sunrise

My research covers two locations with remarkably similar problems, even though an ocean separates them. Outside of Thailand’s Kui Buri National Park, farmers spend their mornings preparing pineapple fields for harvest, while across the Indian Ocean in Sri Lanka, farmers near Udawalawe National Park set out to monitor a variety of different crops. Though separated by thousands of miles, these communities share a common challenge: finding ways to thrive alongside Asian elephants in an increasingly crowded landscape. 

A wild Asian elephant waiting behind the Udawalawe National Park’s electric fence – for fruit from passing tourists.

As an elephant researcher working across these two distinct regions, I have a unique opportunity to compare how variations in historical contexts and cultural structures shape human-elephant interactions in real-time. While most scientific studies rely on comparing methods and results from published literature, our research teams simultaneously monitor these two sites to understand better how anthropogenic change, climatic variation, and regional stressors impact the complex and changing relationship between humans and elephants.  

Research Sites and Local Partnerships

Our research spans two carefully selected field sites, each offering distinct insights into how humans and elephants are currently co-existing. In Sri Lanka, we work at a site established by Dr. Shermin de Silva in 2006, situated just outside Udawalawe National Park, which covers 308km2. Our Thailand field site borders Kui Buri National Park – a protected area more than three times larger at 969km2 – where our partners at Bring The Elephant Home (BTEH) have built strong community relationships over two decades. In both locations, Asian elephants and humans share resources, particularly in agricultural areas, but the historical context of these interactions varies dramatically. 

Above: Sateesh with the Sri Lankan UWERP team by Udawalawe reservoir. Below: Sateesh with the Thai BTEH team outside their field station.

A Tale of Two Histories

In Sri Lanka’s Udawalawe area, people have farmed alongside elephants for generations. The construction of the Udawalawe reservoir in 1972 led to the establishment of the national park. The area that became the park had primarily been a teak plantation rather than farmland, which meant that establishing the protected area didn’t require relocating large areas of farming communities – as can often be the case. The farmers who live around the park’s edges today are largely from families who have traditionally farmed the surrounding lands for generations, maintaining their agricultural practices and long history of living in proximity to elephants. 

In contrast, Ruam Thai Village in Thailand represents a more recent human settlement. Established in the 1970s through a government initiative, the village brought together people from across Thailand to create a new community focused primarily on pineapple cultivation, two decades before the area would be designated as Kui Buri National Park in 1999. The crop’s high international market value made it economically attractive, and it also drew interest from local elephants. The tragic deaths of two elephants from poisoning and gunshot wounds in the late 1990s prompted His Majesty the King of Thailand to establish Kui Buri as a protected area specifically for elephant conservation. However, recent research by the  Udawalawe Elephant Research Project (UWERP) and Trunks & Leaves team has revealed that elephants in both locations typically spend only about 50% of their time within national park boundaries, highlighting the critical importance of understanding and supporting coexistence in the surrounding landscapes. (See Annie’s blog on How Elephants in Sri Lanka Use Protected Areas here.)

Ruam Thai village’s farming zones alongside Kui Buri National Park, Thailand.
Patchwork farming plots around Udawalawe National Park, interspersed with houses and forest fragments.

These different historical trajectories have shaped distinct landscape patterns. Sri Lankan farms form a patchwork of individual plots interspersed with houses and fragments of forest, reflecting generations of land division and management. Ruam Thai’s layout is more structured, with a centralized residential area separated from a consolidated farming zone that borders the protected area. 

Elephant Memory and Cultural Heritage

Over an elephant’s 60-year lifespan, they build up an extensive catalog of experience across a vast landscape. Due to the social complexity of elephant culture individual experiences become part of a vast assemblage of experiential knowledge that crosses generations. We’re discovering that elephant populations may develop distinct “cultures” influenced by their interactions with human communities over generations. In Sri Lanka, for instance, elephant family groups demonstrate sophisticated knowledge of traditional movement corridors that predate current human settlements. Meanwhile, in this area of Thailand, elephants show different patterns of adaptation to the more recently established agricultural landscape. 

The concept of generational learning adds another layer to this complex relationship. Like humans, elephants can pass on behavioral responses to past experiences. In both locations, we’re observing how historical interactions influence current elephant behavior and how these learned responses might be transmitted to younger generations. 

Pathways to Harmonious Coexistence

While the challenges in each location are unique, our ultimate goal remains constant: creating environments where both humans and elephants can thrive together. In Sri Lanka, this means building upon generations of traditional knowledge about elephant movement patterns. In Thailand, it involves developing new strategies that account for the more recent nature of human-elephant interactions. 

Current initiatives in both locations show promise. Sri Lankan farmers are experimenting with crops less appealing to elephants that will allow them to use the same land, while maintaining historic elephant pathways through their lands. In Thailand, community-led initiatives in high-conflict areas are exploring converting pineapple fields to organic alternative crops that will reduce conflict and improve healthy farming.  

Looking Ahead

As our research continues, we’re working to understand what successful coexistence looks like in these different contexts. Can the traditional knowledge of Sri Lankan communities inform new approaches in Thailand? Might Thailand’s community-centered development model offer insights for Sri Lankan villages? By studying these questions across two distinct cultural and historical settings, we hope to develop more nuanced and effective approaches to fostering positive human-elephant relationships. 

The path to harmonious coexistence requires patience and understanding, but studying the shared histories of humans and elephants in each landscape provides crucial insights for future conservation efforts. As we continue our research, one thing becomes clear: successful conservation strategies must honor both the human and elephant histories that shape each unique landscape. 

The Tom Yum project timeline: Facilitating human-elephant coexistence in Asia through planting unpalatable crops

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Lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime, and chili – these ingredients of the Tom Yum soup, a classic Thai dish, don’t simply remain in the bowl. They also play a role in facilitating human-elephant co-existence. Our partner in Thailand, Bring The Elephant Home (BTEH), began the Tom Yum project in 2020 to help support the local community by designing and implementing experiments using alternative crops that are unpalatable to roaming elephants. In 2022, we also welcomed PhD researcher Tyler Nuckols of The University of Colorado, Boulder in Ruam Thai for a first 4-month pilot study on the potential of alternative cropping as a method to promote human-elephant coexistence, which will contribute to the completion of their PhD dissertation. Three years after its conception, this project has grown from helping farmers alleviate economic losses to a profitable and eco-friendly venture. What’s going on in Ruam Thai nowadays?

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Where The Elephants Roamed

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By S. de Silva

This slider shows areas containing habitat for elephants (yellow) in the year 1700 vs. 2000.

Where Did The Elephant Habitats Go?

The bulk of conservation efforts center around protected areas as the primary means of safeguarding wildlife and wild places. This is in response to recognizing that human activities are altering the face of the earth at an alarming pace, leading to the loss and fragmentation of habitat for numerous species. Often, our attention is on proximate threats and especially on particular biomes, such as forests. But over what sort of timescale and what sorts of ecosystems have these changes actually been taking place? In order to protect the biodiversity we have today, we have to really understand the processes that maintain them and how we got to where we are.

Asian elephants provide a good perspective on the problem. I’d heard some conservation organizations state that elephants had lost as much as 90% of their historic range, but I couldn’t find a single scientific reference that showed this. Was it true? When I first saw their distribution on a map, I got curious – though classified as a single species, Asian elephant populations occupy many different types of landscapes ranging from grasslands to rainforests that are now cut-off from another. At one time, these disparate populations must have been joined together and if we could reconstruct what happened to these habitats over time, we would have part of the answer. So, I enlisted a team of collaborators to find out exactly when and where elephant habitats started disappearing. In a way, you can think of elephants as being ambassadors for these ecosystems (a reason they’re referred to as “flagship” species). But we couldn’t know exactly where elephants or their habitats had been simply by looking at maps or records directly, so we needed a different trick.

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Sri Lankan Economic Crisis: Why it Matters

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UWERP’s field technician, Janaka, delivering a month’s supply of dry rations to a rural Sri Lankan family

The story so far…

Over the last few months, Sri Lanka’s economy crashed and the island nation is now facing its worst economic crisis in history. For Sri Lankans, the crisis has turned their daily lives into an endless cycle of waiting in lines for basic goods – many of which are being rationed. Why is this happening?

The main reasons are loss of foreign currency due to COVID’s impact on tourism, and mismanagement of the country’s predominantly agricultural economy. Foreign reserves have been reduced by roughly 85%, grinding daily life to a halt. There are huge lines for fuel (for transport) and gas (for cooking). The lack of fuel also affects the country’s power supply, with people facing up to 16 hrs of power cuts daily. The lack of fuel has created a shortage of vegetables in the market and thus the prices have shot up by 30-80%. Additionally, as the country cannot afford imports, products like butter and milk powder are now unavailable. The Sri Lankan Medical Association has also stated that medical supplies are running low and by the end of April, Sri Lanka ran out of key medicines and medical supplies. 

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Human-Elephant Conflict: Opportunities for coexistence

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As the world grows more crowded, spaces inhabited by wildlife and humans tend to overlap resulting in human-wildlife conflict (HWC). While peaceful coexistence is possible, negative encounters due to various factors continue to be a challenge in conservation. Human expansion into wildlife habitat is especially problematic for Asian elephants that need a large area for their ecological needs[1]. As a result, these animals break into human settlements and cause significant losses to the community. 

Asian elephants are found to impose the highest damages with a probability of 35.1%.[4] Photo by Lokesh Kaushik on Unsplash
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The Global Goals and Asian Elephant Conservation

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The 17 Sustainable Development Goals provide a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for people and the planet. In celebration of Earth Month, we broke down all 17 Global Goals to discover how each relates back to our mission to protect and conserve Asian elephants and their habitat.

Global Goal 1: No Poverty

In developing countries where elephants roam wild, like Sri Lanka, poverty and elephants can become intertwined. Small farmers can lose their entire livelihood overnight from an elephant raid, and an 8,000 pound animal walking through a farm can destroy everything in its path.

Finding ways for farmers to make a living alongside Asian elephants is key to the survival and success of both elephants and people. Our Coexistence Project studies both sides to develop innovative ways that farmers can maintain a steady income while living peacefully alongside wild Asian elephants.

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Bees are Helping Thailand’s Elephants and Farmers to Peacefully Coexist – Bee Fences in Asia Part 2

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A new study brings hope for reducing conflicts between elephants and farmers in Thailand

Guest post by Antoinette van de Water

Beehive fences in Thailand. Photo: BTEH

Kaeng Hang Maeo district in Eastern Thailand is in an area of high human-elephant conflict. A herd of about 70–80 elephants lives between the protected areas and agricultural land, causing damage to crops almost on a nightly basis. Over four years ago, Bring The Elephant Home (BTEH) and the Phuluang Wildlife Research Station started a joint project to evaluate the effectiveness of beehive fences in deterring Asian elephants, under supervision of Dr. Lucy King. We set up a pilot beehive fence around a subsistence farm surrounded by elephant habitat and installed camera-traps to record the elephants’ reactions to the bees, which belong the species Apis mellifera, or European honeybee.

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When farmers and elephants compete for space

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By Lena Coker

These farmers in Sri Lanka are at the interface of forest and agriculture, where most incursions by elephants occur.

In Sherpur, rural Bangladesh, as the human population increases, so does the demand for the land and natural resources that the elephants need to survive. This is a story of human-animal conflict that is repeated around the globe with many species and rural communities as they struggle to find the balance for coexistence. Continue reading →

Can Incense Sticks Help Protect Crops from Elephants?

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By Salik Ansar

Pradeep’s father along with Pradeep’s wife and daughter, welcoming us to their farm.

Almost every other day we read about some “human-elephant” conflict in the local Sri Lankan newspapers. Some claimed that 2019 has seen the most deaths of elephants, due to human elephant conflicts. The government resorted to the dubious strategy of handing out guns to the Civil Defense Force and wildlife officers in order to control the problem. Through-out the passage of time, humanity has never been great at making moral judgements. Lack of government regulations, rightful laws, proper economical structure and even cultural knowledge, the humans and elephants become victims of this shortfall. Sadly, without proper regulations and monitoring, the human-elephant conflict will only increase in Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile conservationists are also busy finding ways to reduce the suffering from either of the two sides – the Elephants or the Humans. Continue reading →