Bianca Bartz
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Elephants in Asia are getting their own photo IDs now in an effort to help monitor their survival rates and track their movements. Unlike African elephants where both genders have tusks, valuable ivory is only found on male Asian elephants, making them a huge target for poachers. Using “photographic capture-recapture” surveys, researchers are taking photos of individual elephants - in only 80 days they were able to get images of 2400 individuals. “These data revealed some 134 individual male elephants in a population of 991 elephants, with an adult male/female ratio of 1 to 4.33,” according to the Mongabay News.
 The new method complements traditional survey techniques, which can gauge overall elephant densities and sex ratios at population levels, but are unable to monitor demographics of male elephants with a degree of rigor attained by studies that focus on data from individual animals. More importantly, such accurate assessments of male elephants can help conservationists monitor poaching rates over the long term. Also, elephant carcasses can be compared with archival photos to identify individuals and even to aid in law enforcement efforts.
In addition to poaching, another threat to male elephants comes from human farmers defending their food resources from crop-raiders. Recognizing individual males that are prone to crop-raiding can inform better management interventions. At present, exactly how many male elephants engage in crop-raiding is unknown.
(news.mongabay)References: news.mongabay Filed In: |
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