Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 8 - Conflict and Coexistence

  • Shermin R. de Silva, University of California, San Diego
  • Book:
    Elephants
    Published online:
    12 December 2024
    Print publication:
    19 December 2024, pp 211-237

  • Summary

    This chapter examines how practices originating in the colonial era have altered human land-use practices and mindsets across both Asia and Africa. It offers a stringent critique of understanding habitat suitability purely in terms of undisturbed “equilibrium” ecological conditions, absent of humans. Instead, it lays out the longer view, in which elephant distributions have been concurrent with anthropogenic ecological regimes culturally maintained over millennial timescales. It underscores the need for recognizing and reconciling historic land-use traditions such as shifting agriculture and Indigenous fire practices with present-day governance policies. It concludes by making a case for why present-day conditions may not adequately capture the past or future of elephant ecosystems, why protected areas alone will not suffice to serve these species in the face of global change, and how elephants’ remarkable adaptability and behavioral flexibility can act as both asset and liability, depending on human responses.