Sunda the elephant helps conservation plans develop
For the past three months a team has been tracking the movements of a female elephant called Sunda in the Lower Kinabatangan region of Sabah Province, Malaysia, since she was fitted with a radio collar earlier this year. Little by little they are building up a picture of her family’s ranging behaviour, which will ultimately help improve strategies to protect the elephants and prevent them from coming into conflict with people.
The Lower Kinabatangan is one of the four most important ranges for the Bornean elephant, with a population of about 200. But with the expansion of agriculture and palm oil plantations into what was once elephant habitat, human-elephant conflict has become a major issue. As Dr Marc Ancrenaz, Scientific Director of the NGO Hutan reports, “The elephant population living in Kinabatangan is currently trapped in the lower parts of the floodplain. Because of recent human developments and extensive oil palm plantations, the herd is completely disconnected from the elephant populations living up-river in the forest reserves of Segaliud, Tangkulap and Deramakot. Unless forest corridors are created urgently to link up these populations, the risk of human elephant conflicts will increase in the future”.
Since 2007, Elephant Family has been supporting the Elephant Conservation Unit, which was established in 2002 by Hutan to reduce human-elephant conflict at a local level. With six trained members recruited from within the local Kinabatangan communities, the Elephant Conservation Unit is in the best possible situation to collaborate with the villagers. As well as running daily patrols for crop-raiding animals and illegal activities, and raising awareness within their communities, the unit also conducts research to monitor trends in the elephant population distribution, densities and conservation status, as well as its health and genetic status. By understanding how elephants adapt to degraded and fragmented habitat, the Elephant Conservation Unit is not only making a difference for the local communities – the unit has reduced the levels of conflict by up to 90% – but their insights are also contributing towards an improved policy framework for elephant population management of the Sabah Wildlife Department.
The Elephant Conservation Unit is also part of a collaborative project with the Sabah Wildlife Department and the Danau Girang Field Centre, which Elephant Family also began supporting recently. Earlier this year, 26th May to be precise, they were able to fit a radio collar to a 35-year old matriarch that they named Sunda, in order to begin tracking her family’s movements. As Dr Benoit Goossens, Director of the Danau Girang Field Centre, said at the time, “the satellite data from collared individuals will provide important information on the available suitable elephant habitat in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, allowing us to prioritise crucial areas in order to rebuild landscape connectivity with the help of industry, government and NGOs”.
Since May the team has been tracking Sunda’s movements, and it seems that she is spending far less time along the river banks, and much more time inside the forest than expected. It may be that this is because of human disturbance along the river, but it is still too early to know for certain, and only through further tracking of her movements can any conclusions be reached. This is now being researched by a PhD student from Oakland University, USA, in collaboration with the Elephant Conservation Unit.
written by Dan Bucknell on 15th September 10
