The goals of this project are to complete elephant personality profiles in and around salakpra wildlife sanctuary, assess the efficacy of the targeted personality HEC mitigation methodology, and…

This $203,088 Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Asian Elephant Conservation Fund (CFDA# 15.621), supports a five-year research initiative led by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York (RFCUNY). The project aims to: 1) complete elephant personality profiles and assess the efficacy of targeted personality-based human-elephant conflict (HEC) mitigation methods in and around Thailand's Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary; 2) pilot and test the targeted personality-based deterrents (TPD) and non-targeted personality-based deterrents (NTPD) in novel villages around Salakpra; and 3) evaluate the scalability of these personality-driven HEC mitigation approaches across different landscapes in Thailand. The award will also facilitate cross-cultural mentorship between U.S. and Thai students, and promote education and support for Thai rangers and villagers on HEC management strategies. The project is expected to produce guidelines for stakeholders to implement personality-based HEC mitigation approaches in other Asian elephant range countries.

The goals of this project are to complete elephant personality profiles in and around salakpra wildlife sanctuary, assess the efficacy of the targeted personality HEC mitigation methodology, and demonstrate the scalability of HEC personality-based mitigation in two completely novel locations with novel elephants: chantaburi and chachoengsao, thailand. The objectives are as follows: 1) identify individual elephants in the salakpra landscape 2) continue data collection on personality and cognition in elephants living in and around salakpra 3) determine the efficacy of olfactory deterrents and how they can be integrated into the personality-targeted mitigation plan 4) pilot and test the TPD using a systematic before during test design across multiple seasons 5) assess the efficacy of a non-targeted personality HEC mitigation tool (ntpd) in MPS 6) assess the efficacy of the TPD and the ntpd in novel villages with known and unknown elephants around salakpra 7) evaluate the TPD ntpd as a scalable HEC mitigation method across landscapes 8) maintain and expand cross-cultural mentorship initiative betweek U.S. And thai students 9) hire, train and support thai and american research staff and students in the implementation of the research 10) promote education and support of thai rangers and villagers through the project period 11) collaborate with members of the iucn human-wildlife conflict (HWC) and coexistence specialist group (hwccsg) in promoting the integration of animal behavior research in HWC mitigation and 12) produce a final, distributable set of guidelines for use by HEC stakeholdesr to trail or implement the use of ntpd tpds in personality-driven mitigation in other landscapes within thailand or abroad.