Understanding elephants’ needs to reduce conflicts

KOTA KINABALU: Scientific information is extremely important and valuable for both conservation managers and research scientists in their effort to manage and save the Bornean elephants.

According to Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) conservation and research head, Raymond Alfred, who has been studying the movement of the species for more than 10 years, the scientific information is often used to direct daily activities by those in the field.

Additionally, the information is also useful during land use planning process, as research scientists will use the information to formulate hypotheses which they will test by undertaking further research, he said.

“I spent more than10 years gathering key information on the Bornean elephant’s habitat ecology, population status, as well as their feeding behavior with the aim of providing this information and prepare guidelines to the future generation especially Sabahan so that they would be able to save the species from further extinction,” he said.

Among the major threats facing the Bornean elephants presently are the degradation and fragmentation of their habitat, which incidentally raises their risk of genetic isolation from other elephants’ population, particularly when their traditional seasonal migratory routes are blocked.

The blockage also encourages the impoverishment and stochastic extinction of the species.

Aside from that, Raymond also found that the home range of elephants residing in fragmented forests or habitat tend to be larger compared to those living in intact and contiguous forest landscape.

He cited the elephants’ population at the Lower Kinabatangan as an example of elephants living in fragmented forests.

The population at the Lower Kinabatangan has been separated from the main elephants’ population at Sabah’s central forest for 30 years as their traditional migratory routes have been blocked by the development of large scale plantations including the main Sandakan-Lahad Satu Road.

“My finding clearly showed that the size of the home range of the elephant herds in the central forest (non-fragmented forests) is smaller (300 km2) than the home ranging of the elephant herds in the fragmented forests. Human activities and forest disturbances have a measureable impact on the elephants’ movement.”

In continuous forest landscape, the movement rate of the elephant herds was about one kilometer to two kilometers daily but in fragmented forests such as the Lower Kinabatangan, the elephants have a higher movement rate of between five kilometers and nine kilometers daily.

The home range of elephants’ population living in fragmented forests recorded was more than 700 square kilometers.

Raymond blamed the mass difference to the elephant habitat fragmentation.

Incidentally, the fragmentation of elephants’ habitat has also led to the increasing number of human – elephant conflicts at the Lower Kinabatangan, he said.

He said that the herds were found to cover greater distances under three circumstances:

1) When the elephants were affected by elephant control activities’ such as the use of firecrackers and drums to scare them off the plantations;

2) When the elephants enter unsuitable forest habitats such as swamp areas and upland forest probably due to limited food resources and

3) When elephants were forced to travel through narrow habitat corridors, sometimes as narrow as 30 to 50 meters along rivers that were bordered by oil palm plantations.

To counter the issues faced by the elephants, Raymond stressed the need to establish forest corridors or to strengthen existing ones.
“The corridors don’t necessarily have to be established at prime elephant habitats. It could be established at degraded forests areas to facilitate and not restrict the elephant movement. Additionally, the corridor will also provide the elephants with some cover,” he said.

He also stressed that the forest corridors need to be properly designed and managed as this will help minimize the elephants’ ranging distance as well as decrease human – elephants’ conflicts.

He also mentioned that some of the forests corridors that have already been established in Gunung Rara and several other areas by the plantations were not suitable as the elephants’ migration route as they were not wide enough.

“I have observed several wildlife corridors in Gunung Rara as well as a few others at several other areas. The corridors were provided by the plantations themselves to help elephants’ migration. Yet from my study, I have found out that the corridors that were established were not suitable for the purpose and this was based on the information that had been gathered basing on the monthly ranging of the elephants of between 40 and 50km2. In such cases, for such corridors to be effective, they should be at least about 400 to 800 meter in width, and if the distance between two key habitats is farther, then the corridor has to be made wider,” he explained.

Aside from the elephants’ home ranging, Raymond’s study also revealed that elephants cannot survive in the monoculture plantation landscape.

“When studying their feeding behavior, I recorded at least 140 species of plants. Five of the main families consumed by the elephants were Palmae (13 percent), Moraceae (13 percent), Euphorbiaceae (10 percent), Leguminoceae (nine percent) and Graminaeae (eight percent). All the evidences collected supports the fact that food sources from woody climbers, grasses, trees and bamboos dominated the elephants’ diet in the rainforest area,’ he said.

He added that this indicated that elephants needed a combination of undisturbed or virgin forests and lowland secondary forests.
“The woody climbers or Spatholobus sp. contains high quality protein that is crucial in the elephants’ diet. But, they can only be found at virgin or undisturbed forests,” he said.

He opined that elephants’ food plants were highly distributed in certain types of forest habitat.

“Woody climbers have significantly higher density and better diversity in forest stratum one and two (virgin and less disturbed forest), while bamboos and grasses grow in high density in forest stratum four and five. Each forest stratum provides different quantity and classes of food plants for the elephants, and I conclude that in the main elephant habitat, it is imperative to have different forest stratums or qualities for an ideal habitat elephants. Hence, I disagree with the opinion that virgin forests are unsuitable as elephants’ habitat.”

Raymond then said that the key to maintaining a viable elephant population in the long term is to provide them with a sizable natural habitat that is able to support the population.

“In forest reserves, priority is given to the requirements of the elephants, but compatible human activities such as sustained-yield forestry and slow rotation of timber harvesting programme can also contribute to creating good habitat for elephants as re-growth and secondary vegetation often provide excellent food resources and are capable of maintaining higher elephant densities than primary forests,” he said.

Unfortunately, fragmented forests such as those in the Lower Kinabatangan provide none of such perks to the elephants’ population.

“The diversity of food sources has been very low at the Lower Kinabatangan as far back as 25 years ago. From my field observation there, in every 10 adult elephants, at least three to four of them were half blind. We are unsure if this was due to insufficiency in food diversity or due to their polluted habitat resulting from the release and use of effluents and pesticides, respectively, by oil palm plantations industries within that vicinity. In central forest, such as Gunung Rara, Segaliud Lokan as well as Ulu Segama Malua, which were still covered with good forests, I have yet to encounter any half blind elephants,” he said.