England (Commonwealth Union) – The human-elephant conflict has been a pressing issue across the world. Numerous reports have emerged of human-elephant conflicts in many parts of Africa, India and Sri Lanka, resulting in the destruction of property together with crops and vegetation of humans being destroyed, which often leads to the death of elephants, and in some cases, humans. Beehives have been used as a defensive weapon for the human-elephant conflict, particularly in certain parts of Africa. Much of it has been blamed on humans encroaching on elephants residing habitats.
Research involving University of Oxford studies applied high-resolution satellite imagery to examine ways plant diversity impacts elephant movements. The findings, recently appearing in the journal Remote Sensing, may be of use for conservationists to forecast potential human-elephant conflict hotspots when their favorite plants overlap with human settlements.
As the human-elephant conflict keeps increasing across Africa and the world, researchers are seeking new methods to monitor wild African elephants, even applying space technologies for a solution.
The rural community of Sagalla in Tsavo, Kenya, a center for crop-raiding elephants, where researchers at the University of Oxford, Department of Biology joined hands with the charity Save the Elephants on the project to explore how plant diversity on a micro scale impacts elephant movement. For the first time, they monitored the footprints of elephants with a high-resolution hand-held Garmin GPS that captures point to point fixes at each 3-5 seconds, which covered the surface with free high-resolution satellite imagery. While carrying out this procedure, they found that elephants make considered decisions about choosing which path to take based upon their favorite food. The results may play a crucial role for conservationists to predict possible human-elephant conflict hotspots.
Researchers conducting studies on a variety of animals have often observed that they often select a specific path, which may be linked to a variety of factors such as food or a specific scent.
The Sentinel 2A imagery, which is an earth observing technology obtained via an open-source satellite managed by the European Space Agency, permitted researchers to map every single piece of vegetation within each 10m pixel in and around Sagalla. While elephants are normally tracked at 1-hour intervals, the handheld satellite GPS collects every twist and turn, every thorny thicket, every tree that an elephant would approach on its selected path. The elephant data from the research consists of the period from January 2015 – 2020.
The findings demonstrate that bull elephants chose to move on paths that have or lead to plants referred to as Combretum and Cissus which are only consumed by bulls. Family groups usually trod on paths that have Commiphora and Terminalia, which is a preferred dietary choice for family groups with females and young calves. In addition, when the 2 groups combine and travel together, paths are selected by them that have or lead to places where both preferred delicacies are available, giving everyone an option.
The research is significant as the knowledge on how elephants access their favorite vegetation can be valuable for conservation managers to direct resources onto possible conflict hotspots outside protected areas and give greater protection to plant diversity in parks and buffer zones. Mapping the place and composition of specific vegetation species within plant communities also helps scientists to get better knowledge on the impact of human encroachment and vegetation removal on elephant movement.
“The insight that different compositions of elephant groups prefer different vegetation patches could help us better understand where elephants are moving to within community areas to focus mitigation efforts, and also will promote better understanding for management of vegetation quality and composition inside wildlife reserves to keep parks more attractive to elephants inside than outside,” explained Dr Lucy King, from the Department of Biology, University of Oxford and Head of Save the Elephant’s Co-existence Programme.
