Society's Perceptions of African Elephants and their Relative Influence towards the Conservation of Elephants

Africa‘s elephant population continues to decline towards extinction in the face of globally crafted elephant conservation policies. Thus far, society questions the initial design structure, contribution of local communities and relevance of these policies. Using cross-sectional survey data from Zimbabwe the paper investigates local communities’ perceptions of elephants and their relative influence towards conservation of elephants using the multinomial logistic regression model. Results indicates that, high human-elephant conflict and low revenue from elephant farming promote elephant decimation while, observable positive direct returns from elephants to local communities promote conservation. The paper therefore concludes that to save African elephants, it may be necessary to engage local communities as active main stakeholders in the policy formulation so as to internalise local interests - thus avoiding errors of omission and commission.