Human-elephant conflict (HEC) poses a serious problem in Africa for both local livelihoods and elephant conservation. Elephant damage is the price local people pay for coexisting with this species, and is assumed to reduce tolerance for elephants. However, conservation-related projects, through the benefits they offer may enhance local tolerance toward elephants. This study aimed to examine how crop damage by elephants and the benefits gained from conservation activities affect local people’s tolerance toward elephants around Moukalaba-Doudou National Park in southwest Gabon based on long-term ethnographic research and interview surveys in two periods (2010 and 2019). Based on the results, crop damage by elephants had a significant negative impact on the local social economy, leading to a decrease in human population in the area and making local people highly resentful of elephants. However, in one of the villages where employment from research and conservation activities was concentrated, many acknowledged the benefits associated with wildlife and expressed high tolerance for elephants. These findings suggest that benefits from conservation activities can increase tolerance toward elephants, which is negatively affected by the crop damage they cause. However, it should also be noted that externally generated projects have limitations and drawbacks. It is important to establish a system in which the benefits of conservation are shared widely and distributed appropriately, and wherein income resources are diversified. Multisectoral interventions focusing on local socio-ecological vulnerability are needed to mitigate human-elephant conflict and advance the conservation of African elephants.
It is important for the development of conservation projects to establish collaborative relationships with local populations, and for that, a detailed understanding of local lifestyles is required. In particular, basic information on local people's natural resource utilization is essential. In this article, the authors analyzed livelihoods in Moukalaba-Doudou National Park (MDNP), southwestern Gabon based on quantitative data obtained from long-term field research. It was shown that people inhabiting the area around the MDNP depend heavily on natural resources for their livelihoods and they produced sufficient food within the region. However, it was also shown that the variety of food items was poor compared with other protected area in Africa and the nutritional status is presumed to have been inadequate. When compared with the data before the establishment of the National Park in 2002, consumption of bush meat decreased remarkably whereas that of fish only slightly increased after ten years. It is supposed that the people around the MDNP have converted their lifestyles flexibly to coexist with the conservation projects in a part, but it is also the fact that conservation practices threaten local livelihoods to some extent.
We take our revenge on our masters using fetishes, by making them drink our saliva in herbal infusions and other potions." 2 A Congolese Babongo Pygmy On the 30 th of June 1865, whilst exploring the mountain range in Gabon that now bears his name, Paul Du Chaillu visited an encampment of "Obongos", or "dwarfed wild negroes" (1867: 315). He was the first European to come into contact with Pygmies and to give a precise description of their way of life 3. Although they were the first to have contact with Europeans, Gabonese Pygmies are the least well known of the Central African Pygmy groups, doubtless because they fail to conform to the stereotype of forest-dwelling huntergatherers. The scanty literature devoted to them includes a few linguistic texts (Raponda-Walker 1996 [1937], Mayer 1987), some rather unreliable work by ethnologically-minded 1 The article was written by J. Bonhomme and M. De Ruyter. The ethnography on which it is based is derived from fieldwork conducted by J. Bonhomme, M. De Ruyter and G.-M. Moussavou. The article has been translated from French by Matthew Carey. 2 Cited in Gambeg, Gami & Bigombe Logo 2006: 137. 3 Du Chaillu does not use the term "Pygmy" in his travel writings, published in 1867. It is only in his 1872 opus, The Country of the Dwarfs, a prettified version for children, that he uses it, following the example of Georg Schweinfurth, who had encountered an Akka "Pygmy" at the court of the Mangbetu king in 1870. There, he also makes the connection to Graeco-Roman legends about Pygmies.
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