Xishuangbanna Humanoid Conflict Risk Assessment Study

With the increasing number of population,more resources developed and land used by human,wildlife living environment is getting worse,which forces them to compete for limited resources and living space with human and leads to further upgraded contradiction between human and wildlife.This paper takes Asian elephants as the representative for the contradiction and frequency of the conflict between human and elephant in the Asian elephant distribution area is increasing year by year.This not only causes huge economic losses,but also influences the attitude of local residents toward the protection of Asian elephants.It also makes the protection and management of Asian elephants facing serious crisis.By the use of Asian elephant claims data and combining with the elements such as the geographical environment,population density,the type of human planting structure and land use patterns in the Asian elephant distribution area,this paper will make a risk assessment of human-elephant conflict in Xishuangbanna area by the method of Ecological Niche Factor Analysis and predict the distribution of conflict area and classification of risk level.Meanwhile,a survey is carried out on the attitude of the farmers in the region on the protection of Asian elephants and the willingness to accept compensation for the damage caused by Asian elephants.The main results are as follows:According to the distribution of Asian elephants in Xishuangbanna,Xishuangbanna is divided into Jinghong-Menghai research area and Mengla research area.The 3 parameters were calculated by the niche factor analysis model,where the marginal values of M in the two research areas were all greater than 1,which were 1.315 and 1.62,respectively.It shows that the conflict area of human image has certain selectivity to environmental conditions,indicating conflicts between humans and elephants do not occur in any region.The tolerance values of T were 0.474 and 0.546,respectively,and the specific values were 2.105 and 1.832,respectively,which shows the specific requirements for the environmental conditions of the human elephant conflict zone are not particularly harsh and a wide range of human-elephantconflicts exit.The risk index of human-elephant conflict is calculated based on the model ranging from 0 to 100.According to the Boyce index,Xishuangbanna is divided into no risk,low risk,medium risk and high risk.After statistical analysis,conflicts risk region is accounted for 21.29% of the xishuangbanna,where low risk region is 2397.79 km2,medium risk area 959.13 km2,high risk are 671.20 km2.The area of Jinghong Menghai rish region is 2212.44 km2,where the risk region in Jinghong city is 1918.98km2,and that in Menghai County is minor,covering only 293.44 km2 which has a great relationship with the small number of Asian elephants in Menghai.The total area of risk region in Mengla zone is 1815.68 km2,slightly lower than that of Jinghong Menghai.According to the survey of farmers in the risk region,in 71 valid questionnaires,70.42% of respondents are willing to protect Asian elephants,those unwilling to protect Asian elephants accounted for 19.72%,where nearly 10% of respondents will not hurt Asian elephants,but will not protect the Asian elephant as well.According to the questionnaire data,by establishing multiple linear regression model of willingness to accept compensation and multiple variables,it is found that the willingness of the villagers has positive correlation with the age of the villagers and the annual amount of damage to the villagers.The average willingness to accept compensation per household is 7352.21 yuan.According to the risk distribution map of human-elephant conflict created by the model(including occurred human-elephant conflict and un-occurred human-elephant conflict),this study presents relevant recommendations.In the region with occurred human-elephant conflict,the damaged area is compensated reasonably according to the classification of the risk level;in the region with expected human-elephant conflict,prepare precautionary measures to the villagers in the risk area by making reasonable planning and adjustment of planting structure,so as to reduce the probability of human elephant conflict and provide decision support for government reserves,forestry departments and insurance companies.