Elephant Movement Research Articles

Spatiotemporal movement pattern of Asian Elephants Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758 in Sindhudurg District, Maharashtra, India

The extension of the Asian Elephant’s Elephas maximus range in the northern Western Ghats (Sahyadri) was observed since 2002. This colonization was marked by elephant crop raiding events in the newly colonized Sindhudurg District, where the local community had no experience of living with elephants. The present study was conducted to understand the spatiotemporal patterns of crop depredation (raiding) and to prioritize areas to inform future interventions on managing this ecological phenomenon turned conflict. Data on crop raiding between 2002 and 2015 was obtained from compensation records with the state forest department, and mapped at village scale. Subsequently, we used three indices of crop raiding, viz., Crop Raiding Frequency (CRF), Relative Crop Raiding Intensity (RCRI), and Crop Raiding Vulnerability Index (CRVI). Results show a gradual northern movement of elephants and of the crop raiding zone over the period of 2002–2015. The rankings provided by CRVI, identified villages in a narrow strip of foothills of the Sahyadri mountains as severely vulnerable. With sufficient long term data, CRVI would be a highly useful index for prioritization of villages for resolving human-elephant negative interactions; and other cases of human-wildlife interactions too.

A multistakeholder exercise to identify research and conservation priorities for Asian elephants in China

China is home to a small but expanding population of wild Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). Both research interest and conservation efforts have increased in recent years, but these have been fragmented. Here we present the results from a collaborative, multi-sectorial, multi-stakeholder exercise to identify priorities for Chinese elephant research and conservation. We first compiled a comprehensive list of issues, categorized under nine research and nine conservation themes, through an on-line survey of stakeholders. These issues were subsequently consolidated, timelined (as short-, mid-, or long-term issues), and ranked by their perceived priority in a two-day workshop attended by 44 people representing 28 organizations. The initial list of 656 issues (337 research and 319 conservation) was consolidated into a list of 251 (121 research and 130 conservation) issues. After priority ranking, we retained the top-three issues within each theme (making a total of 55 priority issues, due to a tie), which are then discussed in detail in this paper. Most (87%, n = 55) priority issues were classified as short-term, suggesting that the exercise might have succeeded in identifying the current priorities, but not emerging issues that might require attention in future. Some issues appeared in various forms in different themes. Among research questions, participants highlighted the importance of understanding the carrying capacity of the current elephant range habitats, elephant movement patterns and expected range changes, the drivers of human-elephant conflict (HEC), improvements to the current HEC financial compensation mechanism, and ways of engaging local communities in HEC mitigation. Regarding elephant conservation, recurrent issues included effectively engaging communities, improving HEC early-warning systems and financial compensation mechanisms, establishing a new national park within elephant range, and creating mechanisms for communication and collaboration among elephant research and conservation stakeholders in China. Our exercise was effective in engaging experts from a diversity of different sectors and organizations in discussions about Asian elephants in China, and generated a list of priorities that can help guide elephant research and conservation efforts.

A cross-scale modeling framework for decision support on elephant management in Kruger National Park, South Africa

Conservation areas, like national parks, are hotspots of social-ecological and social-economic activities. The resulting interactions contribute to an inherent complexity of these systems, making simulation models a vital form of support for their management activities. These models are often unimodal, i.e., limited by design to only one particular question or a specific temporal and spatial scale. We implemented the cross-scale and multi-modal base model MARS KNP for the Kruger National Park, South Africa that combines the agent-based paradigm with a dynamic vegetation model.As a proof-of-concept, we developed an elephant movement model within MARS KNP to evaluate the base model's decision-support capabilities. The study was mainly focused on the underlying software mechanisms that allow easy integration of multi-scale spatio-temporal data objects. MARS agents can probe, interact with, and modify these objects. We found that this feature is essential for a cross-scale integration of different modeling approaches.Additionally, we propose a definition of the term ‘base model’ to shorten the provisioning time of decision-support tools.

Development and validation of a spatially-explicit agent-based model for space utilization by African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) based on determinants of movement

African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are well-studied and inhabit diverse landscapes that are being transformed by both humans and natural forces. Most tools currently in use are limited in their ability to predict how elephants will respond to novel changes in the environment. Individual-, or agent-based modeling (ABM), may extend current methods in addressing and predicting spatial responses to environmental conditions over time. We developed a spatially explicit agent-based model to simulate elephant space use and validated the model with movement data from elephants in Kruger National Park (KNP) and Chobe National Park (CNP). We simulated movement at an hourly scale, as this scale can reflect switches in elephant behavior due to changes in internal states and short-term responses to the local availability and distribution of critical resources, including forage, water, and shade. Known internal drivers of elephant movement, including perceived temperature and the time since an individual last visited a water source, were linked to the external environment through behavior-based movement rules. Simulations were run on model landscapes representing the wet season and the hot, dry season for both parks. The model outputs, including home range size, daily displacement distance, net displacement distance, and maximum distance traveled from a permanent water source, were evaluated through qualitative and quantitative comparisons to actual elephant movement data from both KNP and CNP. The ABM was successful in reproducing the differences in daily displacements between seasons in each park, and in distances traveled from a permanent water source between parks and seasons. Other movement characteristics, including differences in home range sizes and net daily displacements, were partially reproduced. Out of the all the statistical comparisons made between the empirical and simulated movement patterns, the majority were classified as discrepancies of medium or small effect size. We have shown that a resource-driven model with relatively simple decision rules generates trajectories with movement characteristics that are mostly comparable to those calculated from empirical data. Simulating hourly movement (as our model does) may be useful in predicting how finer-scale patterns of space use, such as those created by foraging movements, are influenced by finer spatio-temporal changes in the environment.

The 2020 elephant die-off in Botswana.

The cause of deaths of 350 elephants in 2020 in a relatively small unprotected area of northern Botswana is unknown, and may never be known. Media speculations about it ignore ecological realities. Worse, they make conjectures that can be detrimental to wildlife and sometimes discredit conservation incentives. A broader understanding of the ecological and conservation issues speaks to elephant management across the Kavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area that extends across Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Our communication addresses these. Malicious poisoning and poaching are unlikely to have played a role. Other species were unaffected, and elephant carcases had their tusks intact. Restriction of freshwater supplies that force elephants to use pans as a water source possibly polluted by blue-green algae blooms is a possible cause, but as yet not supported by evidence. No other species were involved. A contagious disease is the more probable one. Fences and a deep channel of water confine these elephants’ dispersal. These factors explain the elephants’ relatively high population growth rate despite a spell of increased poaching during 2014–2018. While the deaths represent only ~2% of the area’s elephants, the additive effects of poaching and stress induced by people protecting their crops cause alarm. Confinement and relatively high densities probably explain why the die-off occurred only here. It suggests a re-alignment or removal of fences that restrict elephant movements and limits year-round access to freshwater.

Coupling African elephant movement and habitat modeling for landscape availability-suitability-connectivity assessment in Kruger National Park

Making an appropriate conservation decision often requires understanding the functional connectivity of the landscape for focal species. Graph theory and continuous surface methods have become powerful tools to quantify landscape connectivity for animal movement. However, a key limitation of these methods is the use of thresholding to define either habitat patches or links between patches. We explore how to incorporate African elephants’ (Loxodonta africana) movement data into an “Availability-Suitability-Connectivity (ASC)” framework which integrates habitat suitability modeling and graph-based network analysis, and how to implement connectivity results to inform conservation management that addresses locally intensive habitat utilization by elephants. In our ASC analysis, node availability was identified by satellite imagery classification and node suitability was estimated by MaxEnt model. Links were determined by effective movement between nodes in three days. Differences of Integrative Index of Connectivity (dIIC) and its fractions were calculated to prioritize patch importance, which were then used for mapping an example landscape management zones to reduce elephant local ecological impact. In total, 544 nodes and 1345 links were identified in the landscape graph. Although suitable nodes were spread across the landscape, elephants intensively used habitat at the central area. Our zone map demonstrates areas for landscape management that can facilitate elephant range expansion. The integrative framework quantified the ASC interactions between animal movement and landscape features. The results highlight the potential for coupling geographic and ecological methods to effectively identify and focus conservation efforts. Prendre une décision de conservation appropriée demande souvent une compréhension de la connectivité fonctionnelle du paysage pour l’espèce en question. La théorie graphique et les méthodes de surface continue sont devenues des outils puissants capables de quantifier la connectivité du paysage pour le mouvement des animaux. Cependant, une limitation de ces méthodes est l’utilisation de l’indexation pour définir les petites zones d’habitat ou les liens entre ces zones. Nous explorons comment l’on peut inclure les données sur le mouvement des éléphants africains (Loxodonta africana) dans un cadre de “Disponibilité-Pertinence-Connectivité (DPC)” qui intègre la modélisation qui mesure si l’habitat est convenable avec une analyse du réseau graphique et comment l’on peut mettre en œuvre les résultats de connectivité pour influencer les gestionnaires de la conservation qui s’occupent de l’utilisation intensive de l’habitat par les éléphants. Dans notre analyse DPC, la disponibilité nodale a été identifiée par la classification d’imagerie satellitaire et la pertinence nodale a été estimée par le model MaxEnt. Des liens ont été déterminés par le mouvement effectif entre les nœuds en 3 jours. Les différences des Indices Intégratifs de Connectivité et ses fractions ont été calculées pour prioriser l’importance des zones ce qui a été par la suite utilisé pour cartographier un exemple des zones de gestion du paysage afin de réduire l’impact local et écologique des éléphants. En tout, 544 nœuds et 1345 liens ont été identifiés sur le graphique du paysage. Même si des noeuds étaient répartis à travers le paysage, les éléphants utilisaient surtout l’habitat dans la zone centrale. Notre carte des zones montre des endroits pour la gestion du paysage qui pourraient faciliter l’agrandissement de l’habitat des éléphants. Le cadre intégratif a quantifié les interactions DPC entre le mouvement des animaux et les caractéristiques du paysage. Les résultats mettent en lumière le potentiel de combiner les méthodes géographique et écologique afin d’identifier et focaliser de façon efficace les efforts de conservation.

Emergence of the wrapped Cauchy distribution in mixed directional data

Inferring the most appropriate distribution (or distributions) to describe observed directional data is important in many applications of circular statistics. In particular, animal movement paths are typically analysed and modelled by considering the distribution of step lengths and turning (or absolute) angles. Here we demonstrate that a single-wrapped Cauchy distribution can appear to fit directional data mixed from two different underlying wrapped normal distributions. We derive mathematical expressions to calculate the parameter space for which this occurs and illustrate the result by analysing an example data set of the movements of African bull elephants (Loxodonta Africana). We conclude that the presence of a wrapped Cauchy distribution in observed directional data can, in certain cases, be explained by data coming from two distinct underlying distributions. We discuss how this may relate to the presence of multiple movement modes within an observed path when analysing animal movement data.

Movement tortuosity and speed reveal the trade-offs of crop raiding for African elephants

Animals living in heterogeneous landscapes are often faced with making a trade-off between maximizing foraging success and avoiding risk. Using high-resolution GPS-tracking data, this study explored the fine-scale movement patterns and risk sensitivity of crop-raiding African elephants, Loxodonta africana, in the anthropogenic landscape of Tsavo, Kenya. We analysed patterns in the speed and tortuosity of elephant movements over the 24 h surrounding crop-raiding events and compared them with those of nonraiding elephants during corresponding periods. Crop-raiding elephants moved faster and straighter (less tortuously) with closer temporal proximity to farmland, which we argue reflects their increased intensity of risk avoidance behaviours in response to approaching humans. Once inside farmland, elephants appeared to reduce movements associated with risk avoidance to forage intensively on crops, decreasing their speed and reducing the likelihood of moving in straight lines while crop raiding. These results highlight trade-offs in the fine-scale movement patterns of elephants living in anthropogenic landscapes with differing levels of habitat quality and exposure to humans, providing new insight into how they perceive the risks associated with crop raiding.

Characterizing multispecies connectivity across a transfrontier conservation landscape

Abstract Connectivity conservation is aimed at sustaining animal movements and ecological processes important to ecosystem functioning and the maintenance of biodiversity. However, connectivity conservation plans are typically developed around a single species and rarely empirically evaluated for their relevance to others, thereby limiting our understanding of how connectivity requirements differ across species. We used an omnidirectional application of circuit theory and GPS data from six species to evaluate connectivity at multiple scales for multiple species within the world's largest transfrontier conservation landscape in southern Africa. We evaluated the effects of linear barriers, natural habitat types and anthropogenic land use on movement. We identified multispecies connectivity hotspots as areas where current flow was concentrated or channelled through pinch points. To evaluate surrogate species for connectivity, we evaluated the correspondence among single‐species connectivity across the entire landscape and also examined whether a more localized corridor for African savanna elephant Loxodonta africana captured high multispecies connectivity values. Connectivity models revealed many intact areas across the landscape with diffuse current flow, but also evidence that fences, rivers, roads and areas of anthropogenic use acted as strong barriers to movement—particularly in the case of fences, which completely blocked female elephant movement. Tests of correspondence among single‐species connectivity models revealed spotted hyaena and African wild dog as the strongest surrogate species of connectivity. Female elephants were found to be the weakest surrogate species of connectivity at the landscape scale. However, focusing within a localized elephant corridor revealed the areas of concentrated or channelled connectivity for most species in our study. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that the single‐species focus permeating connectivity literature may result in conservation plans that poorly conserve the connectivity needs of co‐occurring species. Our study also highlights the importance of testing the efficacy of surrogate species for connectivity at multiple scales. We recommend evaluating multispecies connectivity to prioritize areas for conservation that safeguard the connectivity needs of multiple species of conservation concern.

Spatial geochemistry influences the home range of elephants

The unique geochemistry surrounding the Palabora Mining Company (PMC) land may act as a micronutrient hotspot, attracting elephants to the area. The PMC produces refined copper and extracts phosphates and other minerals. Understanding the spatial influence of geochemistry on the home range size of African elephants is important for elephant population management and conservation.The home ranges of collared elephants surrounding the PMC were significantly smaller (P = 0.001) than conspecifics in surrounding reserves, suggesting that their resource needs were met within these smaller areas. Environmental samples (soil, water and plants) were analysed from the mine area and along six transects radiating from the mine centre. Tail hair and faecal samples from elephants at the PMC, and conspecifics within the surrounding area were analysed. All samples were analysed for minerals essential to health and potentially toxic elements (PTEs; As, Ca, Cd, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, P, Pb, Se, U, V and Zn). Results show that the geochemistry at the PMC is different compared to surrounding areas, with significant elevations seen in all analysed minerals and PTEs in soil closer to the mine, thereby drawing the elephants to the area. Additionally significant elevations were seen in elements analysed in water and vegetation samples. Elephant tail hair from elephants at the mine was significantly greater in Cd, whilst Mg, P, Cu, As, Cd, Pb and U concentrations were significantly greater in elephant faecal samples at the mine compared to the non-mine samples.When micronutrient hotspots overlap with human activity (such as mining), this can lead to poor human-elephant coexistence and thus conflict. When managing elephant populations, the influence of mineral provision on elephant movement must be considered. Such detailed resource information can inform conservation efforts for coordinated programmes (UN SDGs 15 and 17) and underpin sustainable economic activity (UN SDG 8, 11 and 12).

Climatic and Resource Determinants of Forest Elephant Movements

As a keystone megafaunal species, African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) influence the structure and composition of tropical forests. Determining the links between food resources, environmental conditions and elephant movement behavior is crucial to understanding their habitat requirements and their effects on the ecosystem, particularly in the face of poaching and global change. We investigate whether fruit abundance or climate most strongly influence forest elephant movement behavior at the landscape scale in Gabon. Trained teams of ‘elephant trackers’ performed daily fruit availability and dietary composition surveys over a year within two relatively pristine and intact protected areas. With data from 100 in-depth field follows of 28 satellite-collared elephants and remotely sensed environmental layers, we use linear mixed-effects models to assess the effects of sites, seasons, individual identification, elephant diet, and fruit availability on elephant movement behavior at monthly and three-day time scales. At the month-level, rainfall, and to a lesser extent fruit availability, most strongly predicted the proportion of time elephants spent in long, directionally persistent movements. Thus, even elephants in moist tropical rainforests show seasonal behavioral phenotypes linked to rainfall. At the follow-level (2-4 day intervals), relative support for both rainfall and fruit availability decreased markedly, suggesting that at finer spatial scales forest elephants make foraging decisions largely based on other factors not directly assessed here. Individual identity explained the majority of the variance in the data, and there was strong support for interindividual variation in behavioral responses to rainfall. Taken together, this highlights the importance of approaches which follow individuals through space and time. The links between climate, resource availability and movement behavior provide important insights into the behavioral ecology of forest elephants that can contribute to understanding their role as seed dispersers, improving management of populations, and informing development of solutions to human-elephant conflict.

Exploring movement decisions: Can Bayesian movement-state models explain crop consumption behaviour in elephants (Loxodonta africana)?

Animal movements towards goals or targets are based upon either maximization of resource acquisition or risk avoidance, and the way animals move can reveal information about their motivation. We use hidden Markov models (HMMs) fitted in a Bayesian framework and hourly Global Positioning System fixes to distinguish animal movements into distinct states and analyse the influence of environmental variables on being in, and switching to, a particular state. Specifically, we apply our models to understand elephant movement decisions around agricultural fields, and crop consumption. As it is unclear what the role of habitat features are on this complex process, we analyse whether elephants target agricultural crops for consumption, or simply pass through them in search of water. Our HMMs separate elephant movements into two states: exploratory movements that are fast and directional, and encamped movements that are slow and meandering. For each elephant, we ran 16 models with each possible combination of selected habitat features (river, elephant corridor, agricultural field, trees), and repeated these analyses including interaction effects with both season and time of day. We used cross-validation to select the best model. In corridors, exploratory movements are dominant. Elephants mainly showed encamped movements at the river during the dry season, when temporary water sources have dried out and elephants relied on this permanent water source. In fields, males most often exhibited exploratory movements to and from the river, while females showed an increase in the frequency of encamped behaviour during the dry season and at night-the times when most crop consumption and movements through fields occur. Adaptation to risk could explain this behaviour, since foraging in fields is likely less risky under the cover of darkness and during the dry season when farmers are absent. This sex segregation in elephant movement decisions highlights the importance of predation risk in shaping movement patterns, which can result in sex segregation in responses to mitigation methods. The increase in encamped movements in the dry season suggests the importance of agricultural timing, and shows the potential for early ploughing and early-harvest crop types in order to reduce elephant crop consumption. Taking this into account could increase efficiency of elephant crop consumption mitigation.

Natural and anthropogenic drivers of Bornean elephant movement strategies

Endangered Bornean elephants are severely threatened by ongoing habitat transformation and increasing levels of human-elephant conflict. Understanding how elephants move across intact and transformed landscapes, as well as within them, is therefore of vital importance for the successful implementation of conservation management initiatives. We combined remote sensing and GPS telemetry data to identify broad habitat utilization and key movement areas to aid elephant management and conflict mitigation in three spatially-isolated populations in central and eastern Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Home ranges were estimated using Brownian Bridge Movement Models and specific behavioral movement traits were identified by pathway analyses. These behavioral traits enabled a fine-scale evaluation of movements between and adjacent to forest patches and the role of large-scale agriculture in shaping elephant movements. Both natural (topological) and anthropogenic (agricultural) landscape features were found to have a broad influence on elephant movements. All elephant populations exhibited human-mediated behavioral responses, regardless of disturbance level. Throughout their range, elephants appeared to actively select relatively degraded forests, as measured by aboveground carbon density. However, elephants actively avoided urbanized areas, including roads and villages. Throughout the elephant range, high-speed, low-trajectory movements were found at low aboveground carbon locations, with 27% of all such movements located in large-scale agriculture. Our results suggest that agriculture impacts movement strategies of elephants, with evidence of repeat agricultural use pointing towards an active rationale for this behavior. Elephants were also found to use ridgelines as movement pathways, providing further context for the protection of such forested areas. The Lower Kinabatangan population, located in small remnant forests, travelled further to meet their ecological needs, suggesting the population is under added strain. Our work represents the broadest landscape assessment of Bornean elephant movements to-date and has important implications for both future work and habitat-level protected area management strategies.

Using elephant movements to assess landscape connectivity under Peninsular Malaysia's central forest spine land use policy

AbstractOne of the most vital and urgent global conservation challenges is to deal with the loss and fragmentation of wildlife habitats, particularly for large‐bodied and wide‐ranging terrestrial megafauna. The Central Forest Spine Master Plan for Ecological Linkages (CFS) was developed by the Malaysian Federal Government in 2010 to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services by securing landscape connectivity between Peninsular Malaysia's main forest blocks. Here we present an evaluation of the effectiveness of the CFS master plan to promote functional connectivity for Asian elephants, one of its focal species. The specific objectives of our study were to identify the most critical forest patches to maintain connectivity for elephants in Peninsular Malaysia, assess functional connectivity within the CFS ecological linkages, and identify alternative corridors where appropriate to enhance CFS effectiveness. We used the largest animal movement dataset in Peninsular Malaysia (220,000 GPS locations from 53 elephants) to develop models of elephant movement probability and to estimate landscape resistance using step selection functions based on landscape characteristics. According to our evaluation of 28 linkages, 57% of them provided high functional connectivity, 28% provided acceptable connectivity, and 14% provided low to no connectivity. A very important and positive finding is that the CFS linkages with the highest centrality values (i.e., the most important to maintain overall connectivity in Peninsular Malaysia) also score highly in functional connectivity (i.e., they are actually effective corridors for elephant movement). This means that an adequate CFS implementation can lead to high levels of functional connectivity among Peninsular Malaysia's main forest blocks. Based on our assessment, we recommend to conduct some revisions on the CFS plan to ensure its effectiveness.

Elephants for Africa: male Savannah elephant Loxodonta africana sociality, the Makgadikgadi and resource competition

The resurgence of the Boteti River, at the western border of the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park (MPNP), has had a large influence on the importance of this area in the framework of ecosystem conservation in Botswana and, in particular, for the movement of elephants into historical rangelands. The River represents a hard border to the MPNP and community lands to the east. Cultural knowledge about how to deal with elephants is deficient because of the lack of recent exposure to this species, aggravating the issues in the region. Working towards human–elephant coexistence, Elephants for Africa's research focuses on the social and ecological requirements of male Savannah elephants Loxodonta africana, alongside those of the human population, and applies this in the context of human–wildlife resource competition in the region. Strong partnerships with the communities bordering the MPNP and engaging a local non‐governmental organization board of experts to guide our work are the foundation of evolving working solutions to decrease the socio‐economic impacts of living alongside elephants. The Boteti River and the MPNP constitute a key area for the long‐term sustainability of populations of large mammalian species, including elephants.

Towards a reliable assessment of Asian elephant population parameters: the application of photographic spatial capture\u2013recapture sampling in a priority floodplain ecosystem

The hitherto difficult task of reliably estimating populations of wide-ranging megafauna has been enabled by advances in capture–recapture methodology. Here we combine photographic sampling with a Bayesian spatially-explicit capture–recapture (SCR) model to estimate population parameters for the endangered Asian elephant Elephas maximus in the productive floodplain ecosystem of Kaziranga National Park, India. Posterior density estimates of herd-living adult females and sub-adult males and females (herd-adults) was 0.68 elephants/km2 (95% Credible Intervals, CrI = 0.56−0.81) while that of adult males was 0.24 elephants/km2 (95% CrI = 0.18−0.30), with posterior density estimates highlighting spatial heterogeneity in elephant distribution. Estimates of the space-usage parameter suggested that herd-adults ({hat{sigma }}_{HA} = 5.91 km, 95% CrI = 5.18–6.81) moved around considerably more than adult males ({hat{sigma }}_{AM} = 3.64 km, 95% CrI = 3.09–4.34). Based on elephant movement and age–sex composition, we derived the population that contributed individuals sampled in Kaziranga to be 908 herd-adults, 228 adult males and 610 young (density = 0.46 young/km2, SD = 0.06). Our study demonstrates how SCR is suited to estimating geographically open populations, characterising spatial heterogeneity in fine-scale density, and facilitating reliable monitoring to assess population status and dynamics for science and conservation.

Poaching lowers elephant path tortuosity: implications for conservation

ABSTRACTPoaching is the most immediate threat to African elephants (Loxodonta africana). Several continental‐wide surges in poaching have occurred since the latter half of the twentieth century, and the latest surge occurred from 2007 to 2012. The behavioral responses of elephants to poaching risk has not been studied widely because of a lack of high‐resolution movement data collected simultaneously with verified causes of mortality. We managed to collate 2 such datasets from 2004 to 2013. We studied the spatial‐temporal changes in movement behavior of 11 elephants in their core areas. Past studies have focused on elephant movement along corridors. We tested for the effect of poaching risk on their path straightness (i.e., tortuosity) while controlling for other environmental and human activities in the landscape using a set of generalized linear mixed models. To test for temporal variation of tortuosity, we used a time‐series linear model. Elephants turned less frequently while they were in poaching locations and at times with a high level of poaching activity, even though their speed did not change. The variation of tortuosity is a good indicator of differences in poaching risk as perceived by the elephants, which could complement patrol‐based anti‐poaching efforts by wildlife managers, especially in remote, inaccessible landscapes. © 2019 The Authors. The Journal of Wildlife Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Wildlife Society

Human settlement drives African elephant (Loxodonta africana) movement in the Sebungwe Region, Zimbabwe

AbstractUnderstanding the key drivers that influence the potential distribution of herbivore species in changing landscapes has been at the centre of enquiry in wildlife science for many decades. This knowledge is particularly important for keystone species like the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) whose population is declining even in conservation areas. The Sebungwe Region is part of the Kavango‐Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area and supports ~4,000 elephants. The Sebungwe Region has lost an estimated 76% of its elephant population over the years. This study aimed to determine how the elephant distribution in the Sebungwe Region was affected by human settlement and whether the patches for elephant distribution were large enough for elephant habitation. The prediction of the potential distribution of the elephant was based on presence‐only data modelled through an ensemble algorithm that combined several candidate models to enhance predictive ability. We observed that human settlement drives the potential distribution of elephants in the Sebungwe Region (test AUC = 0.95), and patches from the model were on average <1.5 km2. Our results provide initial insights into the key habitat factors that drive distribution of elephants in the Sebungwe landscape. Future conservation of the elephant could benefit from our study through systematic planning of settlements, which might help minimise human interaction with wildlife.

Overlapping landscape utilization by elephants and people in the Western Okavango Panhandle: implications for conflict and conservation

Many wildlife populations exist outside of protected areas, and it is necessary to understand how these animals use a landscape mosaic that includes humans. Patterns of landscape use in space and time can help inform strategies to mitigate negative interactions between people and wildlife. We aimed to estimate the landscape utilization of elephants where they ranged through a mosaic of human-modified land-use and undisturbed habitat to better understand spatial implications for human-wildlife interactions. We studied locations and utilization distributions of ten bull elephants in the Western Okavango Panhandle region of Botswana. We calculated utilization distributions, patterns of landscape use, and daily movement relative to permanent water and human land-use. The annual distributions of the monitored elephants ranged from 1220 to 3446 km2 and showed seasonal variation, with wet season distributions being significantly larger than dry season distributions. On average 49.4% of elephants’ core distributions in the dry season and 12.3% in the wet season fell within 5 km of human land-use. Elephants ranged increasingly farther from permanent water sources as the wet season progressed, while in the same time frame elephants moved closer on average to human land-use. Elephants were more likely to be near human land-use during the night than they were during the day. Diel patterns of elephant proximity to human land-use did not match patterns of proximity to water. Conservation and management efforts must consider the diel and seasonal patterns of elephant movement in order to fully address the issue of human-elephant interactions.

Identifying climate refugia and its potential impact on small population of Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) in China

Climate change is anticipated to alter both wildlife distributions and their movement patterns, due to shifts, loss, and fragmentation of habitat, increasing the risk of extinction for many endangered species. Therefore, climate change must be integrated into wildlife conservation strategies. Using the case study of Asian elephants in China, we used the maximum entropy model to assess habitat suitability by incorporating current and future (2050s) bioclimatic and environmental variables. We then delineated climate refugia where suitable habitat overlapped under both scenarios. Then, we use circuit theory model to analyse potential movement by elephants (through measuring current flow), by linking current habitats and future habitats. Our results showed that current suitable habitat covers an area of about 5228.18 km2, of which 45.71% is projected to be lost by 2050 due to climate change, leaving 2836.76 km2. Just 327.2 km2 new suitable habitat was projected in 2050s. Climate refugia covered 2509.56 km2, and were mainly located in Mengyang and Shangyong reserves and their surrounding regions. Moreover, maps connecting suitable habitats under current and 2050s identified different regions delineated as important for the potential movement of elephants, which mainly distributed in regions of climate refugia. We proposed various actions to ameliorate the predicted impacts of climate change on Asian elephant, including protecting suitable habitat within regions where elephant are currently distributed, establishing corridors between areas where elephant are distributed, creating cross-boundary protected areas, and translocating elephants. This approach could be applied to the conservation planning of other wildlife, especially for umbrella species that support high biodiversity.