Demography of a population with a long history of poaching and the utility of the individual identification technique as a tool for monitoring intermittently studied elephant populations

In many elephant populations in Africa, adverse effects of poaching including altered age and sex structure and long calving intervals continue to negatively impact the rate of recovery. The study reported here characterized the demographic status of the elephant population in Meru National Park, Kenya, so as to determine the size, age and sex structure, and calving interval of the population and to compare its demographic parameters against those from the relatively stable elephant population at Amboseli. Additionally, a demographic study conducted 7 years earlier enabled us to determine the demographic performance of the population and to explicitly test the utility of the individual identification technique in monitoring intermittently studied populations. We found 392 elephants in the park. The proportion of older individuals was lower, and the calving interval was longer than estimates from Amboseli. We recognized 16% of elephants indexed in the previous study. Our results suggest that the individual identification technique may be useful in monitoring demographic changes including poaching in intermittently studied elephant populations. Overall, our results suggest that although the Meru elephant population showed signs of recovery, poaching continues to imperil its recovery.     

Landscape-scale habitat response of African elephants shows strong selection for foraging opportunities in a human dominated ecosystem

Balancing trade-offs between foraging and risk factors is a fundamental behavior that structures the spatial distribution of species. For African elephants Loxodonta africana, human pressures from poaching and conflict are primary drivers of species decline, but little is known about how elephants structure their spatial behavior in the face of human occupancy and predation. We seek to understand how elephants balance trade-offs between resource access, human presence and human predatory risk factors (poaching and conflict killing) in an unfenced, dynamic ecosystem where elephants persist primarily outside protected areas in community rangelands. We used tracking data from 101 elephants collected between 2001 and 2016. We investigated elephant behavior in response to landcover, topography, productivity, water, human features and human predation risk using third-order resource selection functions. We extended this analysis by employing a mixed-effects multinomial regression to identify temporal shifts in habitat use, and evaluated temporal shifts in movement patterns by estimating mean squared displacement across different productivity periods. Across periods, elephants displayed strong selection for productive areas and areas near water. Temporal shifts in habitat use showed that, during the dry period, elephants were clustered around permanent water sources where humans also congregated. At the onset of the wet period, a shift occurred where elephants moved away from permanent water and from permanent settlements towards seasonal water sources and seasonal settlements. Our findings indicate that foraging and water access are important limiting factors affecting elephants that potentially restrain their spatial responses to humans at the scale of our analysis. Given that pastoralists and elephants rely on the same resources, increasing human and livestock populations enhance pressure on shared resources and space in Africa's drylands. The long-term conservation of elephants will require approaches that reduce poaching as well as landscape level planning to prevent negative impacts from increasing competition for preferred resources.