PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #21: Conservation of Biodiversity: Human landscapes, reserve design. Presiding: C. Meine.
Tuesday, August 7, 2001. 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Madison Ballroom D.
Age structure, group size and habitual raiding behavior of elephants raiding crops around Kibale National Park.
ILUKOL, CHIYO1,2, 1 2
ABSTRACT- Conflict between elephants and farmers is widespread in Africa and Asia. If solutions to ameliorate the negative impacts of elephants on humans are not found, these conflicts will severely jeopardize elephant conservation. Such solutions require detailed understanding of the ecology and behavior of crop raiding elephants. I examined age structure, group size of crop raiding elephants, and evidence of habitual raiding by sub-adult and adult males in Kibale National Park, Uganda. Non invasive determination of age-structure from dung boli measurements were taken within Kibale and in crop fields adjacent to the park. Group size of crop raiding individuals was estimated from elephant tracts and dung characteristics. Habitual raiding was determined by following crop raiding elephant groups to examine dung contents for presence of crops. Crop raiding was undertaken by both sub-adult (47 %) and adult (53%) males (7-25+ years) in group sizes ranging from 1-8 individuals. Half of all elephant groups adopted a movement pattern that kept them near cultivation, and these groups made daily incursions into crop fields. Although more than 60% of dung found in the crop fields belonged to elephants under the age of 20, persistent raiding by adults above 20 years of age was also indicated. The presence of habitual raiding by a few elephant suggests that these elephants can be targeted with aversive conditioning to deter these groups from crop depredation.
KEY WORDS: conservation, crop raiding, elephants, human/wildlife conflict