This thesis is an attempt to answer the question: How to live with wild elephants in a changing landscape? This study investigates the relationship between Adivasi people and wild elephants in and around the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve of the Kodagu District in South India, incorporating a multispecies ethnography to study the contact zone between humans and elephants. This study emphasis the inclusion of local ecological and cultural knowledge in wildlife conservation incentives, highlighting the awareness that is quite common among the Adivasi people, that elephants possess agency and intelligence.
Researcher
Deepak Bhat is a PhD Student at the Centre for Research in Evolutionary, Social and Inter-Disciplinary Anthropology at the University of Roehampton, UK. In 2017 Deepak completed an MPhil specialising in Environmental Humanities from University of Cape Town, South Africa.