Save Elephants in the Wild

The Issues

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Elephants are a "keystone" species. They act as architects of the forest and savanna, by opening areas to allow for other wildlife to feed, by being seed dispersers, and as salt miners. They are also highly vulnerable to poaching for their valuable tusks, and for their meat.

For these reasons, the Wildlife Conservation Society has long supported projects directly concerning elephant conservation in Africa and Asia. Some of these efforts are long term, to understand elephant and forest ecology and to protect elephants and their habitat; others are shorter term, for example taking advantage of new technologies to better understand elephant movements.

Following the decision in 1997 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to allow a one-off sale of stockpiled ivory from a few southern African countries where elephant populations are robust, WCS was asked to help establish an elephant monitoring program in to ensure that this decision did not have a deleterious effect on the more endangered forest elephants. WCS’s contributions to this program, known as MIKE (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephant) is coordinated in Africa and Asia by WCS's Dr. Steve Blake and Dr. Simon Hedges, respectively.  This risk assessment for elephant populations will serve as an early warning system against elephant declines and inform the debate on the trade in ivory.

Emerging Crisis in Chad’s Zakouma National Park

Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Dr. Mike Fay is working in Chad’s Zakouma National Park with park staff to protect some of the last surviving central African elephants from poachers. Because its staff has stood firm in the face of adversity, Zakouma remains the best protected park in central Africa. But the fight to save Zakouma’s elephants is urgent. The Chadian authorities have pledged to safeguard the herds when they leave the park during the wet season and prevent incursions of poachers into the park. Information networks must be strengthened, and collaboration with Chad’s military enforced. WCS bought an airplane, which is piloted by Darren Potgieter, who is carrying out anti-poaching surveillance and monitoring the elephant movement patterns. Please help WCS fund this work in Zakouma – to pay for guards, better equipment, aerial surveillance, and collaborations with local communities also plagued by poachers. This story is featured as the cover story of the March 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine and in an online multimedia presentation at ngm.com/0703.
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Tracking Elephants

Because tracking forest elephants is impeded by the thick canopy and understory, WCS is developing and implementing new survey techniques to monitor elephant populations and their movements. To ensure that monitoring and protection of these elusive animals continues well into the future, all projects include training programs to enhance Africa's and Asia’s local technical and professional capacity.

Dr. Fiona Maisels and Dr. Steve Blake directs and teaches a regional training program that introduces 25 central African biologists and wildlife managers per year to ecological survey and monitoring techniques. These trainees have come from five central African countries. A major objective of the training is to identify field and analytical leaders, train them in standardized survey and census methods and GIS (Geographic Information Systems), and to establish a collaborative basis of data collection, analysis and presentation. This training is enabling them to fully participate in the elephant-monitoring program. While, in Asia, Dr. Tony Lynam has trained government staff in Law Enforcement Monitoring (LEM) techniques for the MIKE program in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, and Simon Hedges has trained hundreds of government and NGO staff in elephant survey methods in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand.

Living with Elephants

In east Africa, savannas are open landscapes and elephant are more readily monitored using airplanes. However, there is a history of heavy poaching even within national parks, which reached its zenith in the 1970's. In Tanzania, Dr. Charles Foley is examining the effects of past poaching on elephant herd's social systems and the importance of migration corridors for elephants in the Tarangire National Park ecosystem. The loss of older, experienced, herd matriarchs due to poaching has left some family groups without the knowledge of where to locate food during drought periods. As a result, herds poached in the past are reluctant to leave the park and its protection. In drought years, this has resulted in death by starvation for many elephants and has an impact on the population as a whole.

The current focus in the field is on human/elephant conflict, which has increased as elephant populations have expanded along with human populations. Areas set aside as national parks are not big enough to accommodate the elephant's natural migration. During drought periods confinement is further exacerbated by the lack of fruit within the park areas, resulting in increased crop raiding. Agricultural damage is also widespread when elephants move between refuges.   Good collaboration with Maasai pastoralists is helping to protect rangeland for the good of elephants and Maasai livestock alike.

In Zambia and elsewhere in Africa, Dr. Ferrel (Loki) Osborn looks at practical implications of conserving links between elephant refuges in areas of growing human settlement. He has developed new deterrence techniques, such as the use of hot chili peppers, for crop-raiding elephants. He founded the Elephant Pepper Development Trust, which teaches that deterrence starts with the design of the farm itself. Clearing a path between forest and fields helps elephants to realize they are on hostile territory. Planting a perimeter of hot peppers and dense, thorny thickets of sisal- a source of poles and cord fiber- not only discourages elephant from proceeding further, it also provides a new cash crop. Elephant Pepper food products are now on sale in South Africa and the USA. Finally erecting a pepper and grease coated twine fence around the most desirable crops in the center, provides the final protection. Reducing crop damage and involving the local community through education, training and helping to reduce farmers’ poverty will assure agreement on an open corridor for migration. 

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Research, Assessments and Protecting Strongholds

Dr. Stephen Blake and colleagues work on long term applied ecology studies looking at migration, ranging and protection of Elephants in Central Alfrica. Using GPS radio collarsthey have been able to map the previously unknown migration patterns of these magnificent animals. These data allow WCS field managers to impprove land use planning by scaling up protection efforts to areaas large enough to support the requirements of these animals.
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In the Central African Republic, Dr. Andrea Turkalo continues her ten-year study of demographics and social dynamics of forest elephants in the Dzanga Sangha National Park. She can now identify 2,500 individual elephants and can determine the relationships between individuals. Her very presence assures the safety of one of the last sizeable forest elephant populations. In addition, she participates in a bioacoustics research program with Comell University that records even subsonic elephant vocalizations, to develop new acoustic monitoring techniques all to decipher the forest elephants’ language and track them in the forest.

Updating the status of the remaining elephant populations and the extent of human–elephant conflict is also the focus of WCS’s work in Sumatra. In Bukit Barisan Selatan and Way Kambas national parks, with forest cover declining and human population increasing, Simon Hedges, Donny Gunaryadi, and the WCS Indonesia Progam have collected up to date data on the status of the parks’ elephants, determined the extent of human–elephant conflict, and developed solutions to this conflict.  In recent trials, WCS staff, working with local farmers, were able to repel more than 90% of attempted elephant raids allowing the farmers to harvest their crops more or less unmoleste.  We are now expanding our work to include a Sumatra-wide elephant survey and human–elephant conflict reduction program.

In Myanmar, lots of habitat remains, for example in the very large Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve, but elephants need to be protected and a lack of quantitative information on the status and distribution of wild elephants is a serious impediment to planning conservation activities to ensure their continued survival into the future.  WCS is working, therefore, to assess the status of key elephant populations using the new techniques of molecular biology to obtain genetic fingerprints from the elephants’ dung-piles building on extensive testing of this method in WCS’s site on the Nakai Plateau in Laos.  The work will contribute towards the development and implementation of a National Elephant Action Plan for Myanmar.  WCS has also helped create Elephant Protection Units (EPUs) in the Hukaung Valley – these EPUs patrol elephant “hotspots” to protect the elephant and their habitat.

Financial support is greatly needed to further the work of these and many other projects.  Donations may be made to WCS International Conservation's general fund or to support specific areas of interest. Together we can make a difference to the future of the world's elephant populations and ensure their co-existence with human populations.

Make a Donation Now......Help Save the Elephants!