As delegates at a two-day indaba reached for solutions to human-elephant conflict, there were many who were happy to reach for their guns. At the Southern African Elephant Indaba at Bonamanzi Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal last week, landowners, provincial officials, conservationists, academics and some NGOs gathered for two days of fierce debate. The meeting was framed as a search for a solution to human/elephant conflict (HEC), but from the opening sessions a deeper tension was clear: was this about people’s real struggles, or about justifying a return to widespread culling and hunting? Or both? Deputy Environment Minister Narend Singh reminded delegates that elephants can mean fear and ruin rather than folklore: "Fields of maize flattened overnight. Water infrastructure destroyed. Fences broken. And most devastating of all, lives lost – human and elephant alike." For a child walking to school at dawn or a farmer whose only source of income is trampled in a single night, he said in an opinion piece written after the indaba, the elephant becomes not a cultural treasure, but a source of fear and economic ruin. The indaba was linked to the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF-7) Human-Wildlife Conflict project, which has earmarked $3.4-million to address HEC in South Africa over the next four years. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, backed by the United Nations Environment Programme, will lead implementation, piloting practical solutions such as community rangers, better fence management and early warning systems in hotspots such as the Greater Mapungubwe and uMfolozi nodes.