If there’s an elephant in the room, that’s because it’s not in a protected area
If there’s an elephant in the room, that’s because it’s not in a protected
area
Jim Tan, Mongabay
November 21, 2022
See link
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/if-theres-an-elephant-in-the-room-thats-because-its-not-in-a-protected-area/
for photos.
Over the span of 10 years, a team of researchers have been following 102
Asian elephants in Malaysia, collecting more than 600,000 GPS fixes in the
process.
When they analyzed the data, the team found that the elephants preferred
habitats on the edges of and surrounding protected areas rather than inside
them, raising important questions for the conservation of elephants in the
region.
“This is the most comprehensive analysis of Asian elephant movements and
habitat relationships to date,” said Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, a conservation
ecologist at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia, and a co-author of the
published findings. “Most elephants had more than half their home range
outside of protected areas with only a few individuals having more than 75%
of their home range inside protected areas.”
The wide-ranging study followed the Indian elephant subspecies (Elephas
maximus indicus), in Peninsular Malaysia, and the Bornean subspecies (E. m.
borneensis), in the state of Sabah, to understand their ranging behavior.
It may seem counterintuitive that elephants would prefer to spend their
time outside of protected areas, risking conflict with humans, but there’s
one big motivation: food.
“Against what most people might assume, old-growth tropical rainforests do
not provide much food for elephants,” says Benoît Goossens, a conservation
biologist at Cardiff University and co-author of the study. “Old-growth
rainforests are super-efficient systems where most of the plants are
heavily protected with secondary compounds (toxins) to deter herbivores.”
The foods that elephants prefer, such as grasses, lianas, bananas and
fast-growing trees, are far more prevalent in human-influenced landscapes,
such as plantations or secondary-growth forest. With an adult elephant
needing to find around 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of food per day, they
naturally gravitate toward where more food is available.
Another contributing factor is the very location of protected areas, says
John Payne, executive director of the conservation NGO Bringing Back Our
Rare Animals (BORA) in Sabah, who was not involved in the study.
“All the large terrestrial protected areas in Malaysia exist only because
they are on terrain that is very marginal or impossible for human use,” he
says. “None were chosen to be able to support a viable population of
elephants.”
That’s not to say that protected areas aren’t important for elephants. The
study data show that while elephants prefer disturbed habitats, they don’t
stray far from the forest. The research team hypothesizes that the
elephants stay close to the protected forest areas for refuge, showing that
these areas still have a vital role to play.
One of the most important implications of the study is that human-wildlife
conflict is to some degree inevitable and therefore needs to be managed,
Payne says.
“I would like to see less use of the fluffy term ‘conservation’ which, in
my view, helps to undermine serious discussion and meaningful discussion,”
he said. “Large animals, especially those that cause problems to humans,
need to be managed.”
The research team have proposed several suggestions for dealing with
human-wildlife conflict, including increasing food availability in
disturbed areas within protected areas by planting grasses; land-use
planning that considers elephant behavior; physical barriers in areas where
conflict is frequent; financial compensation mechanisms; promotion of
human-elephant coexistence; and, when all else fails, elephant
translocation.
Despite the challenges, Campos-Arceiz and Goossens say there are a few
reasons to remain positive. While data on Malaysia’s elephant numbers is
patchy, the population currently seems to be stable and not dramatically
declining. In addition, they say, human-elephant conflict in Malaysia
predominantly involves damage to property, like loss of crops, rather than
people being injured or killed. Malaysia has a highly urbanized population
with low rural population density, so it should be possible to set aside
land for conservation. Malaysia is also an upper-middle-income country that
can afford to invest in conservation. And lastly, Malaysia has shown a
commitment to conservation at a national level, including producing an
Elephant Conservation Action Plan for Peninsular Malaysia and Bornean
Elephant Action Plan for Sabah.
“Our results have important implications for Asian elephant conservation,
they show that protected areas are very important but not enough as an
overall strategy for Asian elephant conservation,” Campos-Arceiz says. “Our
key recommendation is to try and understand and integrate Asian elephant
behavioral ecology in our efforts to conserve them.”