“Loss of habitat and overpopulation is leading to more animal-human conflict, and this is a fact that social media users conveniently choose to ignore,” he told Farmer’s Weekly.
Furtenburg’s comments were in response to a recent study led by Niall Hammond, a doctoral candidate in conservation science at Griffith University in Australia.
The study, which was published by The Conversation, focused on analysing social media posts that contained the word ‘elephant’ in 2019. Just over 500 000 posts fell within the parameters of the study.
The study considered the three biggest threats to elephants as identified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature: poaching, habitat loss, and human-animal conflict.
Analysts found that the posts directly relating to one of these three threats accounted for only 21% of the 500 000 posts. Poaching was the most frequently discussed threat (13%), followed by human-elephant conflict (7%) and habitat loss (less than 1%).
Hammond said it was concerning that so little attention was given to human-animal conflict, because living with elephants came at a high cost to local communities.
“Annually, Asian and African farmers may lose up to 15% of their crops to elephants,” Hammond said, adding that 67 people had been killed by elephants in Botswana between 2009 and 2019.
In Zimbabwe, elephants killed 74 people between January and June this year, and 92 in 2021.
Hammond added that communities living with elephants made great sacrifices for conservation, but these sacrifices were rarely acknowledged on social media.
“When human-elephant conflict was discussed, it was typically in response to elephants being killed,” Hammond said, adding that international media coverage of human-wildlife conflict often portrayed local communities as uncaring and blamed them for conflict.
Only 27% of the posts were from people living in countries that had elephant populations.
“This meant that discussions about human-elephant conflict […] were often overshadowed by predominantly Western [social media] users.
“Conservationists and social media users more broadly need to challenge negative portrayals of local communities, increase awareness of the realities of living with elephants, and acknowledge communities’ rights to manage their wildlife sustainably.
“If people care about elephants and want to see them protected, they need to care about, and advocate for, the communities that live alongside elephants.”
