Usually when you speak with the people
in the city, they love elephants. They
want to conserve the elephants.
But it's different from people who has
to face elephants
on daily basis.
Imagine yourself having only a small
plot of land that land sustains
you and your family livelihood. And
suddenly,
big animals come and push your trees,
destroy
your properties. Obviously you will feel
scared.
When you feel scared usually you will do
everything to protect yourself and your
family.
And if they don't know how to deal with
that they will do like retaliation
killing.
If they start to kill the elephants,
slowly,
We will lose the wild elephants in Sabah.
I'm Farina Othman, I am an elephant
ecologist
working on human elephant conflict
issues in Sabah.
Our organization is Seratu Aatai which
means
living together. People and elephants are
competing for the same resources,
so this is where conflicts happen. So
it's very important for us to
find a way to live together with this
animal.
Elephants have their traditional routes
that they will
use generation and generation. So if you
imagine yourself
as a big animal that requires 150 kilos
of food
every day, and then suddenly people stop
you from going there,
but you need to eat because you need to
survive,
what would you do? If they have the
option they will not go
through villages. If we provide them safe
passage
we allow them to use the area with
minimal disturbance from us
then the elephant will just go and then
we'll reduce the potential of conflict
from happening.
We need to help build the confidence of
people when they are dealing with
elephants. The Oregon Zoo helps us to
come up with a guidebook
to understand elephant behavior. By
having the knowledge
people who live with the wildlife will
be able to understand why the elephants
are reacting this way,
when is the active time for the
elephants, how do I react when i'm
in front of the elephants, and then we
need to find a way
how to make sure that if they lost
something,
they can bear the cost of the damages.
For each of the villages there is no
one solution that applies to all. So you
have to go
and sit with them, understand what are
their challenges,
and then together you come up with the
solutions.
From there we will try to create a local
community
elephant team, because this team will
have extra skills
to help the other villagers deal with
the elephants.
Oil palm is one of the main contributors
to the economy of Malaysia.
So our education system, our health care
system, everything depends on that.
There used to be vast tropical forests
in Sabah, but because we want to develop
our country,
we convert that to something else. The
new story is that we
know that elephants can survive in this
landscape.
It's not the ideal landscape for them,
but
they can still adapt and use
a few resources in the plantation. The
plantation must be
part of this effort because it's so
crucial
for their business and for the survival
of the wildlife.
There are several players in the oil
palm industry
that step up to do better in terms of
their practices.
We can advise them where to put the
wildlife corridors
to accommodate the needs of the wildlife.
We hope that one day,
we could prove to the other players that
they don't lose anything
by accommodating elephants in their
plantations.
The thing is that elephants, they
understand you. They are intelligent,
they can differentiate you and the
other people.
And when I'm with them I feel that I'm
being received by the groups
of elephants. What makes me optimistic is
the spirit
of the wildlife itself. They change their
behavior,
they change their movement, they have
tolerated so much.
We owe the animals the same tolerance.
It's very important for us now try to
accommodate them
in this landscape.