» elephant poaching
Poaching disturbs a family affair:
MAF research shows elephants suffer alone
From AnimalNews 8.4
Many view matriarchs—especially in elephant families—as precious creatures. For poachers the matriarch's tusk, the longest and therefore the most saleable, is highly sought. For elephant families—groups of two to 18 mothers, daughters, sisters and cousins—the entire matriarch, not just the tusk, cannot be replaced. As the group leader, matriarchs find safe haven, guard the best food sources, protect females from premature pregnancies and create community.
When poachers kill matriarchs and other adult female relatives, group members scatter and some—according to research funded by MAF—are not able to regroup. Elephants live in complex social groups, are highly intelligent and mourn their dead. Thus, a solitary life is not only contrary to their nature, it causes stress and decreases reproduction rates, causing ripple effects on the population overall.
Although a 1989 ivory ban curtailed poaching in some areas, female elephants in Mikumi National Park—a heavily affected area prior to the ban—continue to reel from family deaths. The number of elephants in the Mikumi-Selous ecosystem, where Dr. Sam Wasser and his graduate student Kathleen Gobush conducted their research, dwindled from 100,000 to 30,000 between 1979 and 1987 because of poaching. Groups of females now average 2.5 elephants instead of 12 and many still remain solitary, Wasser says.
"If poaching were to stop now it would take a minimum of 20 years for the species to recover and probably a lot longer," says Wasser, who has studied elephant-rich areas since 1979. "But poaching in many parts of Africa is currently at its worst in history."
In addition to his wildlife monitoring research, Wasser developed a genetic method to track the origin of poached elephant ivory. He collaborates with the International Criminal Police Organization to uncover major poaching hot spots and large syndicated ivory dealers. Both efforts intend to improve the lives of the highly intelligent and sensitive elephants he studies.
"Once an elephant is solitary, it's very difficult to form a new social group," he explains. Referring to females in Mikumi he adds, "They have lived their lives as loners. They've had it pretty tough. It's like killing the mother and all the sisters in the majority of groups of a socially complex species, like humans, and expecting the survivors to do fine."
Needless to say, female elephants in the Mikumi region are not doing fine.
With MAF funding, Wasser and Gobush discovered that many females, age 10 to 15 when poachers killed their relatives, have still not found new groups nearly 20 years later. As adults, they have elevated stress levels and diminished reproductive success.
In fact, 33 percent of adult females in Mikumi live alone. Comparatively, no solitary elephants exist in the well studied,
unpoached elephant population in Amboselli National Park, Kenya. Indeed, it is extremely rare for a female elephant to live alone under natural conditions. Researchers also documented a 75 percent decline in female elephants living in Africa's Mikumi National Park versus a 60 percent decline for the continent as a whole.
Moving forward, Wasser hopes to improve the plight of these animals. "When you kill these animals there are deeper consequences than people realize," he says.
That realization may help lead to better protections in the future for these magnificent, social animals.
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