# Attitudes towards the Potential Use of Aversive Geofencing Devices to Manage Wild Elephant Movement
## 4 Discussion
Further, by ensuring that stimuli are delivered only when the elephant moved in the 'wrong' direction and not based on its location, will permit elephants to learn accurately and move in the 'right' direction to avoid the shock [96]. Coupling the electric shock with the audio warning provides the ability for elephants to predict and control the receipt of shocks [97; 98], which would further reduce their acute stress response levels as shown for cattle [94]. After elephants learn to predict and control the receipt of shock, chronic stress responses toAGDs might be negligible compared to baseline levels [63; 95]. The impact of electric shocks from AGDs on elephants' wellbeing would, therefore, be negligible or no different to that experienced with other HEC mitigation tools, though this needs further investigation. Many respondents had reasonable concerns about logistical challenges during implementation of AGDs. For example, collaring wild elephants and planning virtual fences will be a very difficult task (Table S5, see also [PERSON] et al. [65]). Fitting collars on wild elephants to monitor their movements has been practiced for many years [4; 17; 28; 32; 65], but AGDs should preferably be used on selected problem elephants or in HEC scenarios where no other acceptable approach has been effective [38]. AGDs should not be considered as a replacement for all other existing HEC mitigation approaches. While elephant herds are sometimes known to raid crops [32; 99; 100], it is primarily the male elephants that are involved in direct confrontations with people [32; 101] and crop raiding [102; 103; 104; 105]. AGDs could help reduce these HEC incidents if used on those types of problem elephants. To successfully reduce HEC incidents with problem elephants using AGDs, it is important to incorporate both human and elephant needs and ensure connectivity between elephant habitats when planning virtual fences [106; 107]. Therefore, conducting baseline studies to understand the land use patterns of humans and elephants and the unique situation of HEC where AGDs are to be implemented are required to design virtual fences appropriately [38]. Our study also revealed several other potential challenges that should be resolved during the research and development process of AGDs. These include ensuring reliability of the technology (e.g., consistency and accuracy of delivering audio and electrical stimuli, maintaining uninterrupted satellite communication), durability of the device (e.g., weather resistance, long lasting battery life), and resolving uncertainties in elephant's behavioural responses to electric shocks (e.g., individual variations in responses or potential to show aggressive behaviours, possibility to learn through social facilitation and possibility of habituation to the stimuli) (Table S5). These possible challenges have been identified and discussed in [PERSON] et al. [38; 64] and should be further investigated. Given the general support or lack of widespread opposition towards AGDs, the next step would be designing and developing a wearable, prototype AGD and optimising it by further testing with captive elephants to provide evidence on its efficacy in managing elephant movement with minimum impact on elephant wellbeing. Once many of the uncertainties are resolved and with the acceptance and support of stakeholders, this prototype device can then be modified (if necessary) and trialled on selected wild elephants in a high-HEC area to further assess its efficacy.