© Jane Wynyard
The magnitude of debarking by elephants was investigated in Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves. About 1617 plants were monitored for debarking intensities for 6months spanning through dry and wet seasons.
Kenya’s premier Samburu elephant population is the focus of a distressing surge in ivory poaching, coincident with an increase in illegal trading of ivory.
Increasing elephant populations in Kenya since 1989 have been widely praised as a conservation success story.
The total aerial count of Elephants in Laikipia-Samburu Ecosystem and for the second time in Marsabit was conducted between 24th and 28th November 2008.
The unique wildlife of the Ewaso Nyiro and valuable services that the ecosystem provides for humans (e.g., clean water and productive grasslands) cannot be conserved by working solely on traditional conservation strongholds such as the national reserves a
Unlike the smaller and more vulnerable mammals, African elephants have relatively few predators that threaten their survival.
A programme to monitor elephant mortality was agreed by the CITES parties in 1997.
Tanzania and Zambia are petitioning the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to “downlist” the conservation status of their elephants to allow sale of stockpiled ivory.
Hierarchical properties characterize elephant fission–fusion social organization whereby stable groups of individuals coalesce into higher order groups or split in a predictable manner.
The dietary and movement history of individual animals can be studied using stable isotope records in animal tissues, providing insight into long-term ecological dynamics and a species niche.
