Public Opinion to the Human and Wild Elephant Conflicts Mitigation, Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary in Kaeng Hang Maeo District, Chanthaburi Province

Abstract

This research was  conducted with the purposes to study of economic circumstances, the society, the level of public opinion, and compare variables that leads to the human and wild elephant conflicts mitigation, Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary in Kaeng Hang Maeo District, Chanthaburi Province. The research instruments were quantitative surveys on 380 samples which are households in the studied area. The statistical methodologies were frequency, percentage, median, max and min, standard deviation, t-test and F-test, and the statistical significance (P-Value = 0.05).

            According to the results, most of the samples, 66.6%, were men. 33.4% of the samples were 41-51 years old. 56.6% of the samples were elementary students. 41.6% of samples spent 31-45 years to settle down. 83.7% of samples do agriculture for their living. 51.1% of samples have less than 100,000 income per year. 43.7% of samples have claimed their properties less than 10 acres, or equal. 71.8% of the samples cultivate less than three agricultural crops. 68.7% of the samples had experienced the destruction by wild elephants. 80.0% of the samples said the distance between their property and the forest were longer than 4 kilometers. 56.3% of the samples, who had no experience of such destruction, were involving with the  resolution towards the issues of wild elephants. 64.5% of the samples were not aware of the boundary of Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary. For conservation knowledges about forest and wildlife resources and knowledge about methods for preserving agricultural crops and techniques for repelling wild elephant, the result were respectively. The level of public opinion were at intermediate level (overate point 3.11) 63.9% and 66.6%. The human and wild elephant conflicts mitigation with different were as follows: 1. Households income 2. Awareness of the boundary 3. Conservation knowledge about forest and wildlife resources 4. Knowledges about methods for preserving agricultural crops and techniques for repelling wild elephants.