STUDY: Elephant conservation may be undermined by Twitter users
The study found that attention on Twitter did not align with the most pressing threats. Habitat loss and human-elephant conflict received relatively little attention.
NIALL HAMMOND: The African forest elephant, the African savanna elephant, and the Asian elephant are all highly threatened species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has identified poaching, habitat loss, and human-elephant conflict as threats common to the species.
Addressing threats to elephants requires public and political will to take action. As elephant conservation relies on international funders, elephant conservation requires support from people within elephant-range countries along with people around the world. For example, from 2010 to 2017, international donors provided US$500 million towards anti-poaching programmes across Africa.
What the public believes to be the primary threats to elephants has an impact on how conservation issues are prioritised and funded. But public views are informed by the media’s coverage of conservation threats.
Social media’s reach has helped to bring attention to elephant conservation globally. But if attention on social media is not aligned with the primary threats to elephants, public support – and therefore political will and funding – may be misdirected towards issues and campaigns that don’t benefit wild elephants.
In our new study, we analysed tweets about elephants posted during 2019 to understand whether the most pressing threats – as identified by International Union for Conservation of Nature – received the most attention. We found that attention on Twitter did not align with the most pressing threats. Habitat loss and human-elephant conflict received relatively little attention.
The study also highlighted a difference between people who lived in countries that had elephant populations, and those that didn’t. Conflict between elephants and humans was an important issue for people living in countries with elephants. But it got little attention from people who didn’t live in areas that had elephants.
Habitat loss received little attention from all Twitter users (less than 1% of all tweets about elephants). Our findings are concerning as the lack of attention for habitat loss and human-elephant conflict may result in these issues being perceived as less important and, therefore, less likely to receive funding and attention from policy-makers…
Addressing human-elephant conflict will become an even more pressing issue in the coming years and decades. This is because habitat loss is expected to accelerate due to climate change, forcing people and elephants into increasing conflict over limited resources. If people care about elephants and want to see them protected in the wild, they need to care about – and advocate for – the communities that live alongside elephants. SOURCE…
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