Many wildlife species suffer from human–wildlife conflict, especially crop‐raiding. Long‐term analyses of mortality patterns are needed to assess the efficacy of management strategies that address this issue. We report mortality patterns from necropsies of 498 Asian elephants from 2009–2018 in an area of northwestern Sri Lanka. Deaths were lowest in July and highest in October, a period of peak crop availability. Most (about 70%) deaths were human‐related, and males were killed in these incidents more frequently than females. As gunshot deaths decreased, other forms of human‐related deaths increased. Additionally, causes of death differed between districts, with more intentional human‐related mortality observed in the district with the highest percent of protected land. These results highlight the importance of understanding the long‐term spatial and temporal variation in wildlife mortality to effectively address human–wildlife conflict. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.

中文翻译：

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人与大象冲突地区亚洲象的死亡率模式

许多野生动植物物种都遭受着人类与野生动植物之间的冲突，尤其是在作物种植方面。需要对死亡率模式进行长期分析，以评估解决该问题的管理策略的有效性。我们报告了斯里兰卡西北部地区2009年至2018年的498例亚洲大象尸检的死亡率模式。七月的死亡人数最低，十月的死亡人数最高，这是农作物可获得高峰期。大多数（约70％）死亡与人有关，在这些事件中，男性被杀的频率比女性高。随着枪击死亡人数的减少，其他与人类有关的死亡人数也在增加。此外，各地区之间的死亡原因也有所不同，在受保护土地百分比最高的地区，观察到的人为造成的人为死亡率更高。这些结果突出了了解野生动植物死亡率的长期时空变化对有效解决人与野生生物冲突的重要性。©2021野生动物协会。