Abstract:
The objective of this research is to study the development and cause of the conflict between human and wild elephants at Tumbon Wangdong, Amphoe Muang, Kanchanaburi and analyze the potential of the community and relevant stockholders in solving the problem according to Adaptive Management. The result of the study shows that the socio-economic development was the major factor inducing human settlement in the elephants habitat. Nevertheless, at present there are two reasons: human intrusion in and around the forest. The factor encouraging wild elephants to come out of the forest areas is human activities. The factors attracting the animals to agricultural areas are water supplies and food resources. Meanwhile, the three factors causing human intrusion into the animals habitat are 1) the socio-economic development of the community 2) the current management of wild elephants, and 3) social factor which is relevant to social structure and the way of living of the local people. The first step of solving the conflict between human and elephants is following folk wisdom. The second step is taken by using past experiences to develop the prevention in order not to let the animals invading agricultural areas. The third step is learning from their own experiences as well as academic research in order to set direction and solution to deal with the conflict problem. The result of stakeholders potential analysis shows that community and relevant organization
follow adaptive management in solving human-elephant conflict in the area but still lack of systems analysis and vision to solve the conflict in the long term