This programme aims to conserve, manage and maintain 'megaparks for metapopulations' of southern Africa's elephant population. This initiative guides the implementation of ecological principles to ameliorate impact and allow populations to be steered by ecological processes while maintaining evolutionary processes. We consider southern African elephant populations as sub-units that make up a series of metapopulations that reside in international clusters of protected areas. These populations represents 70% of Africa’ elephants and their conservation reflects positively on Africa’s societies. Our holistic view calls for a landscape approach to conservation management and suggests that ecological linkages may induce metapopulation dynamics and genetic integrity that should induce regional stability, despite local population fluctuations. Additionally, megaparks should provide for seasonal changes in elephant impacts across space and aid in the maintenance of biological diversity.
We study the demographic variables and landscape dynamics of elephant populations in eight clusters of conservation areas across southern Africa. For practical reasons we consider each of these clusters a megapark. Our research focuses on (1) what determines how elephants range both within and between conservation clusters, (2) how to apply range use information to link conservation areas; (3) what drives age-specific survival and reproductive variables in the megaparks; and (4) how to best deal with conflicts between elephants, people and components of biological diversity in each megapark. We use this information to test the metapopulation metaphor and to outline megaparks to stabilise elephant populations and their impact.
The scientific support for these ideas is available from the publications section of our website, while we provide a more popular treatment of the same ideas through editions of popular magazine articles available for download.
Conservation management in South Africa’s Kruger National Park place emphasis on the natural limitations/ regulation through resource heterogeneity rather than an artificially induced asymptote. Over time animal numbers should track resource availability which are modified by their densities. In this study we assess academic views on the consequences of fluctuations in resource availability and increases in elephant density for age-related demographic variables and apparent intrinsic population growth rate. Our analysis of satellite tracked breeding herds allows inferences on climatic, resource variation and elephant numbers on the spatial dynamics of the population.
In Africa much of the limited resources for conservation is directed at preventing wildlife crime to ensure the persistence of species. Information on the efficiency of these incentives is mostly anecdotal. This project therefore measures and model demographic and spatial responses of targeted elephant populations to the efforts in the mitigation of wildlife crimes. It relies on evaluating the demographic and spatial responses on the viability of these populations to crime prevention initiatives.
In South Africa most elephant populations are fenced off and intensely managed due to their perceived impact on vegetation through the provisioning of water, translocations and/ or contraception. These populations often grow fast due to increased calf survival, reduced calving intervals and reduced age at sexual maturity. Conservation management therefore often aims at controlling population numbers and growth rates. Their effectiveness of such management awaits verification. This project extracts historical trends in selected isolated populations with known histories of management interventions. It furthermore models age-specific survival and breeding rates as extracted from helicopter-based surveys and analytical routines developed and maintained at CERU.
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