{"id":2581,"date":"2026-08-07T17:24:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T16:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/in-africa-a-devastating-war-between-humans-and-elephants-is-brewing\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T17:24:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T16:24:57","slug":"in-africa-a-devastating-war-between-humans-and-elephants-is-brewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/in-africa-a-devastating-war-between-humans-and-elephants-is-brewing\/","title":{"rendered":"In Africa, a Devastating War Between Humans and Elephants Is Brewing"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Rapid urban and agricultural development in southern Africa is driving a dramatic fragmentation of elephant habitats and an unprecedented rise in interactions with local communities.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Disputed Lands<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Approximately 290,000 savanna elephants (<em>Loxodonta africana<\/em>) are estimated to inhabit southern Africa, with their populations slowly rebuilding after decades of rampant poaching. At the same time, human populations are rising rapidly in this part of the continent, leading to the construction of new infrastructure and the expansion of agricultural lands.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">This spider imitates a \u201czombie fungus\u201d to mislead its predators and prey<\/span><\/section>\n<p>To evaluate the consequences of this situation, researchers drew on a dataset covering the period 2004-2020. Collected in Namibia, Botswana and parts of Angola and Zambia, they identified areas where the elephant\u2019s range overlapped lands occupied and exploited by 38 rapidly growing human communities.<\/p>\n<p>Taking into account built and cultivated areas, road infrastructure, fences, as well as forest and grass cover, water sources and climatic and hydrological variations, the models used suggest a strong rise in human-elephant conflicts over the coming decades. If these conflicts are expected to be more frequent during the rainy season, water deficits will also push elephants into agricultural zones, where they are likely to damage crops.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>These projections of land use, demographic and climatic changes indicate that the area of high-risk zones for human-elephant conflicts is expected to increase by 33 to 100% by 2085, with a corresponding rise in the frequency of incidents<\/em>,\u201d write the authors of the new study, published in the journal <em>PNAS Nexus<\/em>.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">Distancing social: plants carefully avoid their decomposing neighbors<\/span><\/section>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"538\" src=\"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786119895_717_In-Africa-a-Devastating-War-Between-Humans-and-Elephants-Is.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-647140\"  ><\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Des travaux n\u00e9cessaires<\/h2>\n<p>Dans l\u2019ensemble, ces travaux indiquent que l\u2019expansion des activit\u00e9s humaines constitue le principal moteur de l\u2019augmentation des conflits entre humains et \u00e9l\u00e9phants, une tendance que le <strong>changement climatique<\/strong> ne fera qu\u2019accentuer.<\/p>\n<p>L\u2019identification de ces futurs \u00ab points chauds \u00bb se r\u00e9v\u00e8le essentielle pour pr\u00e9server les moyens de subsistance des populations locales sans entraver les efforts de conservation des \u00e9l\u00e9phants. Parmi les mesures envisageables, les chercheurs \u00e9voquent une planification minutieuse de l\u2019occupation des sols, le d\u00e9ploiement de syst\u00e8mes de surveillance ou encore une meilleure protection des cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2070,2072,152,2071,78,715],"class_list":["post-2581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","tag-brewing","tag-devastating","tag-elephants","tag-humans","tag-war","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2583,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions\/2583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}