Pachyderm

Nutritional profiles of some preferred food grasses of the greater one-horned rhinoceros before and after grassland burning in Manas National Park, India

2024-02-22T23:58:38-08:00

The nutritional variations of food plants play a significant role in the health and population dynamics of wildlife. The body conditions of vulnerable greater one-horned (GOH) rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) in Manas National Park, Assam, India deteriorate noticeably during the late monsoon to winter, and improve after routine grassland burning, when rhinos feed on the newly emerged leaves and young shoots of grasses. To investigate this, we analysed the nutritional parameters of the leaves of five grass species preferred by rhinos, including three tall (Saccharum spontaneum, S.narenga and Imperata cylindrica) and two short grasses (Cynodon dactylon and Axonopus compressus), before and after grassland burning. Leaf samples were collected in triplicate from five different sites in MNP before (September) and after (March) grassland burning. Biochemical analyses showed the highest crude protein content in S. narenga before and after grassland burning. S. spontaneum and S. narenga had the highest and second highest fat contents, respectively, after grassland burning. Crude fibre content in S. narenga increased significantly (p < 0.05) after grassland burning, but not in the other two tall grasses. The total ash content and the acid-insoluble ash content increased significantly (p < 0.05) in post-burning samples of all five grasses. The short grasses A. compressus and C. dactylon showed the highest calcium and phosphorus contents, respectively, after grassland burning, highlighting their significance in the diets of GOH rhinos along with tall grasses with higher proximate nutrient contents, and their contribution to the improved health status of rhinos after grassland burning. This study will be helpful for improved management of rhino health and their habitats, essential to maintaining the progress made in MNP since the 2008 to 2012 GOH rhino reintroductions under the Rhino Vision 2020 initiative.

Sex differences in home range and habitat use by savannah elephants in Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe

2024-05-13T01:32:37-07:00

Protected areas (PAs) in southern Africa provide refuge to important megafauna such as the savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana). Sections of these PAs are often transfrontier conservation complexes, whose objective of which is to facilitate historic patterns of wildlife dispersal. Knowledge of megafauna home ranges, habitat use, and dispersal in key PAs can inform vital decision-making for elephant conservation. Location data were derived from satellite collars fitted on 26 savannah elephants from 2016 to 2022 in Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe to investigate seasonal and sex differences in elephants' home range sizes, home range overlap and their interaction with environmental variables. Differences in the size of home ranges between sexes in all seasons were not significant. Both male and female elephants had high site fidelity, retaining 60% of their home ranges between consecutive seasons. Only females, possibly tracking forage quality showed reduced overlap of home ranges between the hot dry and hot wet seasons. Male elephants preferred vegetation typles dominated by Colophospermum mopane, whereas females preferred more diverse upland vegetation types, showing a preference for higher elevations than males over all seasons. In areas where elephant movement is restricted by fences and human settlements, continuous monitoring of elephant space use is receommended and research dynmics should be taken into account when developing site-specific management plans for African elephants.

Exploring implications of elephant movements between land use types in an arid savannah landscape

2024-07-22T00:10:40-07:00

While the numbers and distribution of African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) have declined in most African range States, they have been steadily increasing in much of southern Africa. In Namibia’s arid north-west, elephants are expanding beyond Protected areas (PA) into multiple types of land use, leading to socio-economic implications, both positive and negative. Our study aimed to quantify cross-land use movements and fence breaches and explore the institutional, legislative and policy implications of fencing, and a new conservation paradigm for the area. We used satellite movements of eight collared elephant herds in multiple types of land use to the south and west of Etosha National Park for one year. Of these herds, seven had home ranges spanning multiple PA/communal/commercial landscapes, often crossing fences with management or disease significance. The implications of the movements between land uses are assessed in the context of relevant policy regarding management and economics. We conclude that despite challenges to livestock disease control and fencing damage, the expansion of elephant range has resulted in economic benefits to landowners and communal conservancies through tourism and possible consumptive use opportunities, as well as an improvement in general wildlife conservation practices in the area. Regardless of these benefits and the growing interest among rural residents in supporting the establishment of elephant corridors and the removal of fences, Namibia’s legal and policy framework creates numerous implications for landowners and managers when considering fence breaches by elephants. We conclude with recommendations for holistic situational analysis of policy, law and practice and the consideration of amendments to outdated fencing requirements, thereby unlocking the economic and conservation benefits of elephant range expansion in the area.

Five strategies to mitigate human-elephant conflict in the Kasigau wildlife corridor of Kenya

2024-05-13T00:37:52-07:00

Interactions with elephants are increasing throughout the African savannah elephant range as habitat loss and modification and a growing human population continue to bring people and elephants into contact. These interactions can become negative when elephants are tempted into farmland and consume farmers’ crops or destroy water supplies, leading to human-elephant conflict. Each community coping with regular wildlife conflicts faces unique socio-ecological circumstances and constraints. Therefore, understanding the challenges within each system is a crucial step in designing customised management plans and mitigation interventions, adapted to the situation. We used a combination of survey results and participatory group fuzzy logic cognitive maps from six farming communities in south-east Kenya from previous studies, to understand the complex drivers and consequences of conflicts with elephants and how farmers conceptualize these interactions. These data informed the creation of five main strategies for mitigating the impacts of crop-raiding by elephants: deterrent methods, climate-smart agricultural techniques, alternative livelihoods, safety around elephants, and environmental stewardship. We consulted with local experts to design and deliver workshops in the six communities to present potential solutions within the strategies and to provide the content for a take-home manual. Although no single solution has emerged as the ideal way to mitigate these encounters, the workshops demonstrated a variety of approaches that can alleviate the financial and safety concerns of farmers. Future work should include understanding barriers to wider acceptance of such methods and evaluating the efficacy of multifaceted approaches. Creating a customised curriculum for workshops informed by social science data can provide vital information for local people who want to co-exist alongside elephants and other wildlife.

Additional keywords: community-based conservation, conservation planning, conservation social science, human-wildlife co-existence

The The Rhinoceros of South Asia

2024-08-13T07:42:49-07:00

The The political, economic and institutional context of wildlife trafficking networks in Africa and a description of how they operate

2024-09-06T03:23:23-07:00

This review follows from a description of the main transnational organized crime (TOC) ivory trafficking networks published in Pachyderm 63. It provides the broader political, economic and institutional contexts in which these networks originated, to advance a deeper understanding of how these TOC trafficking networks are created. The article also describes how the networks are structured along trade chains, from poachers to foreign importers and distributors, and how they operate, presenting case examples from 1970s in Kenya and comparing them to the 2010s Kromah and Xaysavang TOC network of eastern and southern Africa. The review concludes that state-level corruption has expanded over time, facilitating the operation of these TOC trafficking networks and frustrating their elimination. African nations lose billions of dollars annually to illicit financial flows resulting from various TOC activities which end up in offshore accounts and asset buying. Despite international conventions aimed at stopping corruption and TOCs, the situation is getting worse, not better.

Asian rhinoceros species in early China: unravelling Si (兕) and Xi (犀) in historical Chinese records

2024-05-30T06:07:32-07:00

Has horn length in an Eastern black rhino population (Diceros bicornis michaeli) decreased over time?

2023-01-10T05:53:05-08:00

Guidelines for contributors

2024-10-02T00:38:34-07:00

Tusk metrics and pair symmetry in savannah elephants

2024-06-09T23:34:14-07:00

The right and left tusks and from both genders from five separately culled savannah elephant clans were measured, recording weight (n = 2,453), overall length (n = 563), external length beyond the gingivae (n = 158), internal length within the alveolus (n = 158) and circumference at the lip (n = 158). The increase in tusk weights and lengths with age was reconfirmed as basically exponential in males and more linear in females up to their fifth decade. Between the right and left tusks, the five metrics were on average symmetrical (in the sense of being mirror images of one another), and predictive of both age and each other (i.e. from one the others can be deduced). Strikingly, however, pair length symmetry is less between within alveoli, where growth takes place, than between their corresponding external parts, where tusks are essentially dead tissue. Such greater external symmetry can only occur if the shorter tusk grows faster to catch up with its partner or the longer tooth is reduced through wear towards parity with its partner, or both.

Further observations on savannah elephant tusks

2024-06-09T23:34:44-07:00

The paper analyses weights of 2,425 tusk pairs, and lengths of 398 pairs obtained between 1965 and 1969 from two East African savannah elephant populations, one in Uganda, the other in eastern Kenya and north-eastern Tanzania. They are presented as averages in five-year age cohorts. Separately, length, weight and gender showed no significant differences between the use of the right and left tusks. If neural lateralization exists in elephants, it is concealed by the dynamics of tusk growth and wear, which are described. The fact that average asymptotes at age are only 31% (female) and 38% (male) of the theoretical asymptotes is explained by weathering and wear. Contrary to expectations that single tusks, having to do the work of two, would be shorter than the pair average, they are not, but stay within pair length parameters. Evidence is presented that declining tusk growth occurs in both sexes with advanced age. The longer-tusk pairs have a tight curvilinear relationship to average shoulder height, rising evenly from 24% (females) and 26% (males) under 6.5 years to 58% and 76% respectively in the oldest age classes. That is, they relate to an elephant’s height.

African elephant reintegration from captivity to wild living: quantifying the detailed behavioural changes

2024-02-11T23:35:42-08:00

There is increasing evidence of compromised welfare for captive African savannah elephants managed in confined spaces. With the trend for zoos and captive facilities to close due to public pressure, reflecting ethical concerns, and thier limited capacity to manage 'difficult' behaviours, elephants will continue to require rehabilitation into free-ranging areas or living in the wild. During reintegration from captivity into a free-roaming system, conservation management methods need to be carefully considered to ensure the individual’s welfare. Elephants, have a sophisticated social life and exhibit complex body language employing a multitude of behavioural signals and gestures to demonstrate thier needs and feelings. These detailed signals could be valuable when assessing the welfare status of elephants as any large deviation in behaviour could indicate changes in elephant wellbeing. In this study, a group of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) were monitored as they transitioned from captivity to a free-roaming system. To track the impact of reintegration on elephant welfare, we recorded frequencies of behaviours categorized as Ambivalent, Assessing, Frustrated, and Social, and ofspecific behaviours within each category, across four phases of reintegration into the wild (Stables, Boma, Release and Free). Significant differences in rates between reintegration phases were observed for several categories of behaviour and specific behaviours. Decreased frequencies of Frustrated behaviours and an increase in social behaviours when the elephants were Free were potentially indicative of improved welfare in wild settings. We conclude that monitoring of behaviours is important when assessing elephant welfare, and to establish the success of reintegration operations.

Impact of severe drought on the age structure of a population of African savannah elephants

2024-07-14T05:46:41-07:00

Hundreds of elephants died during a severe drought in Gonarezhou National Park (Gonarezhou) in south-east Zimbabwe during 1992. The following year, entire female herds comprising 670 female and juvenile elephants were captured and translocated elsewhere. Sex-specific von Bertalanffy growth functions for shoulder height against age for elephants culled in Gonarezhou a decade earlier allowed each of 667 elephants captured during 1993 to be aged based on shoulder height. The captured elephants provided a representative sample of the age and sex structure of the population one year after the drought. Immediately after the drought, the age structure was determined by deducting one year from each elephant’s age at capture and compared with that of elephant herds culled in Gonarezhou during 1972-1987. Adult females formed a high proportion (45%) of the individuals in female herds immediately after the 1992 drought, implying that there was high mortality of non-adults during the drought. There were relatively few surviving individuals in the 0-4-year age class, suggesting that mortality was greatest amongst the youngest individuals. When non-adults of all ages were considered, there were fewer males than females amongst the drought survivors, suggesting that the males experienced greater mortality than females. Significant mortality of weaned elephant calves during droughts is uncommon; and the high mortality of non-adults in Gonarezhou during 1992 highlights the particular severity of the drought.

Diane Skinner

2024-08-19T07:29:34-07:00

2024-10-02T00:08:16-07:00

Pleistocene fossil elephant tracks in the Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa

2024-04-04T05:32:25-07:00

Fossilized elephant tracks, along with other vertebrate tracks, have been identified at several sites in the coastal Woody Cape section of the Addo Elephant National Park, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. The tracks occur in aeolianites (cemented dunes). The track-bearing unit has been dated to 126 ± 8 ka, at approximately the boundary between the Middle Pleistocene and Late Pleistocene. In all probability, the trackmaker was the African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana). Viewed in conjunction with the 35 elephant track sites that have been identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast, a widespread Pleistocene elephant presence can be inferred, which is not obvious from the body fossil record. Collaboration with Park management is aimed at developing an interpretive exhibit, which can be complemented by the physical recovery and exhibition of suitable fossilized elephant tracks or the creation of replicas using photogrammetry data.

Early depictions of the first Lisbon rhinoceros in the 16th century

2024-09-23T02:15:47-07:00

The first post-Roman rhinoceros to be seen alive in Europe reached the harbour of Lisbon, Portugal on 20 May 1515. After a fight with an elephant staged on 3 June 1515, King Dom Manuel I ‘the Fortunate’ decided to gift the rhino to Pope Leo X in Rome. The animal drowned when the vessel was shipwrecked in a storm off La Spezia in northern Italy at the end of January 1516. Information and a sketch reached the German city of Nuremberg, where Albrecht Dürer proceeded to make a drawing with text dated 1515, followed by a woodcut of the Lisbon Rhinoceros. Dürer’s works show a characteristic twisted horn in the shoulder region, found in all later copies, which became the standard representation of the rhinoceros from 1545 in books and artworks. During the first part of the 16th century, until about 1560, there were at least 16 works showing a rhinoceros without this Dürer-hornlet. These would have been sketches of the living animal during its short life in Europe, or possibly been derived from such portrayals. Five such works have remained largely unknown, and are here described, discussed and illustrated. First, there is a set of similar engravings found in three separate Cartinhas (booklets) produced in Portugal between 1534-1544 by the printer Germão Galharde, where the animal is uniquely named “Rhinocerom”, here noticed in zoological context for the first time. Second, two similar figures of a rhinoceros on the cover of a pamphlet by the Italian author Giovanni Giacomo Penni and in the background of a large painting by Francesco Granacci of 1515-1516 might both be based on a coloured unsigned sketch found in a volume of manuscripts in the Library of the Vatican (Vat. lat. 2847). Third, the Historia Senensium by Sigismondo Tizio contains a sketch of a rhinoceros in shackles in an entry for 1515. Fourth, a rhinoceros is found among marginal drawings and manuscript annotations added to a volume of Pliny’s Natural History. Finally, a book on Quadrupeds published by Michael Herr in 1546 has an independent illustration of a rhinoceros without a hornlet on the shoulders, copied in books by Hubert de L'Espine of 1558 and Barthélemy Aneau of 1559. All examples are illustrated for future comparison.

African Elephant Specialist Group Chair report/Rapport du Groupe de Spécialistes de l’Eléphant d’Afrique

2024-09-30T04:22:44-07:00

African Rhino Specialist Group Chair report/Rapport du Groupe de Spécialistes du Rhinocéros d'Afrique

2024-09-14T06:29:02-07:00

Asian Rhino Specialist Group Chair report/Rapport du Groupe de Spécialistes du Rhinocéros d’Asie

2024-10-01T07:22:15-07:00

Acknowledging our reviewers

2024-10-02T00:35:41-07:00