The Influence of Habitat Changes on Elephant Mortality Associated with Human–Elephant Conflict: Identifying Areas of Concern in the North Central Dry Zone of Sri Lanka

Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) is becoming increasingly prevalent as human activity expands, and monitoring the impact of habitat quality on wildlife mortality related to HWC is critical for the well-being of wildlife and people. Using ten years of necropsies from free-ranging Asian elephants in the Northwestern Wildlife Region (NWR) of Sri Lanka, we quantified the effect of habitat quality on human–elephant conflict (HEC) (i.e., human-caused elephant mortality), hypothesizing that both artificial (e.g., forest cover loss) and natural (e.g., water availability, temperature) changes would be associated with elephant mortality. We collated necropsies from 348 elephants that died due to human activity from 2009 to 2018, comparing the results with data on forest cover loss, perennial water, rainfall, temperature, and human population sizes. Over the study period, we found that forest cover loss was significantly correlated with human-caused mortality in a district-specific manner. Similarly, access to perennial water and precipitation levels appeared to influence mortality, but not temperature, human population density, or percent land cover used for agriculture. We conducted emerging hot spot analyses to identify areas within the NWR that should be prioritized for protection, which included landscapes that are not currently protected (approximately 43% of the hot spots we identified). Similarly, areas that we identified as cold spots included many areas with minimal forest cover loss. Together, our results emphasize the impact that human activity can have on the measurable outcomes of HEC. We suggest that adaptive HWC management strategies that use retrospective analyses should inform any potential changes to the protection of vital wildlife habitats, such as the north central dry zone of Sri Lanka.