Forest Elephants Establishing Communities Near Humans and Development in Gabon

To better understand how human occupation is affecting forest elephants in Gabon, researchers employed genotyping to study the movement patterns of the pachyderms, revealing that there was a population of resident elephants in an unprotected area.

The genotyping will help researchers and conservation biologists determine the best course of action to ensure biodiversity and species preservation, according to the University of Missouri (MU), which had a hand in the research.

"In Africa, protected areas are often designed around sites that support endangered species such as large mammals. We were tasked with studying elephants outside a protected region in an area that includes humans, oil-drilling platforms and disturbances by machinery," MU biologist Lori Eggert said in a statement. "We examined population structure, movement patterns, and habitat use by sex and age group. We also studied how the elephants moved between the protected regions and the unprotected regions during wet and dry seasons."

Eggert said genotyping is a boon to the research because of its non-invasive nature.

"Many times, analyzing dangerous animals with a hands-on approach is risky, so genetic samples and traces collected through hair samples, fecal samples, and other noninvasive means offer a safer technique to examine species," she said.

Populations of the Central African forest elephant are dwindling, down in number by 62 percent over the last decade and further restricted by a 30 percent reduction in their geographic range. Gabon plays host to the largest population of this species with about 53,000 individuals accounted for today, according to MU.

Thirteen national parks that are suitable natural habitats for the forest elephant have been established in Gabon, and Eggert and her colleagues were tasked with tracking the movement of the forest elephants between two of the parks that are separated by an unprotected area.

The researchers learned that the unincorporated area between the two park boundaries serves as a key year-round habitat for the forest elephants. The scientists contend that the unprotected region is equally important for species conservation.

"We discovered that elephants tend to use the unprotected area as much as they do the protected parks," Eggert said. "A resident population exists in the unprotected area, even though drilling occurs there and humans are present. Some of the elephants seem to consider this their home range and, instead of moving back and forth between the national parks, they inhabit the unprotected area during the rainy and dry seasons. What perhaps is most important is that a relatively large number of females inhabit this area, making this region much more important than we first realized."

The genotype analysis - which was conducted with about 1,000 fecal samples collected in the unprotected area and the national parks - revealed that around 500 elephants occupy the unprotected area during the wet and dry seasons, which suggested that the region supports a resident population.

"Elephants are considered to be a 'keystone' species, or a species that is especially important to the health of ecosystems in Africa," Eggert said. "We're all affected by the health of the forests in Africa, Central America and here in the U.S. The fact that elephants are surviving in a place where drilling for oil is happening is exciting and gives us a glimpse at how to study species in our own country."

Eggert and her colleagues published their work in the journal Conservation Biology.