Executive Summary Conflict between man and wild elephant is not a new phenomenon in Thailand. Some significant events, especially crop raiding by wild elephants, occurred during the second half of the 19th and 20th century, when people encroached into the prime elephant habitats in wetlands, lowland forests and in the uplands to grow rice and other economic plants for export. Blocking train transportation by wild elephants was another type of the conflict at the turn of the 20th century. Setting fire around the paddy, elephant captures (for domestication for timber industries), chasing, relocation and poaching for tusks were direct and indirect measures to reduce the damage and decline wild elephant numbers as well. In the past, wild elephants always lost in the conflict game. While Thailand becomes one of the largest producer and exporter of food in the world but many elephant populations have gone extinct and/or compressed in sub-ordinate habitats. Their remained habitats had reduced in size and isolated. However wild elephant populations and their habitats have been protected since 1960 by the National Park Act of 1960 and Wild Animal Reservation and Protection Act of 1961 (amendment in 1992). Man and wild elephant conflict has been reported again since 1990 at the croplands adjacent to the first wildlife sanctuary of the country (Salakphra Wildlife Sanctuary). Then, the conflict incidents have been known to occur more and more with vary intensity from twenty protected areas, mainly in the west, east, northeast and south of the country. However, the conflict between man and wild elephant in the present time is different from the past time because the elephant conservation has deserved attention from the general Thai public. The projects resolving carried out by the Royal Initiated Projects and governmental organizations have provided advantage to the elephants.
Because almost wild elephants live in wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and reforested areas or habitat improvement, which is the strength of the conflict management in Thailand, monitoring of the present solutions is in the process of evaluation but lacking of participatory of local community is the weakness that cannot ensure the long-term solution. The known causes of man-elephant conflict in Thailand are 1) optimal foraging strategy of elephant herds and individuals or groups of bull when the elephants learn that there are large food patches in agricultural land adjacent to their park habitats. 2) wild elephant numbers are increasing in some severe conflict areas because of local extinction of important predators to control elephant populations, especially, tigers. 3) elephant movement between habitats 4) the strayed young bulls out of the forests etc. Complexity of social and economic aspects of affected farmers, as well as the well adaptation of wild elephant to the preventive measures have usually been studied by NGOs: in Kaeng Krachan National Park by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society); Kui Buri National Park by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) and Salakphra Wildlife Sanctuary by ECN (Elephant Conservation Network). The information indicated that elephant crop raids are increasing in frequency, severity and locations. In addition, it is realized that the manelephant conflict can not be absolutely eliminated as the closed proximity of croplands to the protected areas with the elephants. The strategy to mitigate this problem in future needs adaptive management using learning by doing with coordination of the stakeholders (local communities, wildlife researcher, protected area managers, NGOs and other agencies both at the national and local levels) and monitoring researches on elephant ecology in each area, such as elephant densities and population structure, ranging and movement pattern, feeding behaviors etc.nt