Cause of conflict: intolerance of disruption?

What happened when elephants entered the world of humans

One morning in mid-2002, a mother elephant and her newly born calf attempted to pass from one forest clearing to another, across a road.

It was thought that the mother wished to get her offspring to the larger tract of forest, which lay on the other side. This would afford them more food and safety than the smaller tract within which they had found themselves.

However, the road had, on one side, a raised mud banking about 1.3m in height.

When the mother crossed the road, the calf was still too small to clamber off the road, up the steep mud banking, and into the forest just a few metres beyond.

No matter how much the mother coaxed and cajoled, the calf could not make it up. This went on for several hours, with a crowd gathering from a safe distance.

Cars and vans came along the road. The mother would make them reverse, and the vehicles would then go around the mother and child over an adjacent field.

Perhaps because of her panicked state, the mother never tried to return to the smaller patch of remaining forest from where they had come. Nor did she seek a way around the banking. 

As the hours past, a local man eventually went to get his gun.

The majority of the watching crowd could do little as the man shot the mother several times. Her offspring was captured and tethered to a palette.

On hearing of this later that day, the Kenya Wildlife Service summoned a plane to take the infant to Nairobi, where it was hoped it would be adopted by other elephants.

The young elephant died a few days after it arrived in its new surroundings.

...The victims of human elephant conflict exist on both sides of the species divide.