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FAMOUS KENYAN ELEPHANT RESEARCHERS TO STUDY MINNERIYA KAUDULLA HERDS

By Walter Jayawardhana

Kenya’s world famous Amboseli Elephant researchers led by Nairobi based Elephant conservationist Dr. Joyce Poole of 26 years elephant experience will team up with local expertise like Manori Gunawardena to start a long standing study of Asian Elephants along the lines of the African project focusing on the Minneriya-kaudulla Wewa elephant population.

“We’re starting - in Minneriya-Kaudulla in North Central Sri Lanka - we believe it is urgent and are willing to go for it. Together with Manori we will develop and maintain a long-term study of social behavior and demography of the Minneriya-Kaudulla elephant population along the lines of the Amboseli study - naturally with a special focus on communication (aong elephants)” the Amboseli researches said recently.

The Amboseli Elephant Research Project(AERP) is a program of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, and is world renown as the longest and most detailed study of free-living African elephants. Over the past three decades, AERP has identified more than 2,400 individual elephants, named and numbered them and detailed their life histories. Joyce Poole began her elephant career in Amboseli in 1975. She worked part-time as Research Director of the ATE/AERP from 2002 to 2007. It was based in Amboseli National Wild life Park in Kenya.

Amboseli researchers said that Manori Gunawardena, wanted to study Asian elephant social behavior with them . She has many years of experience working in Yala with the elephant research group there as well as doing conservation work in both India and Sri Lanka - moving elephants and looking into landscape and corridor issues - but her true love is social behavior and she has wanted to start a project along the lines of Amboseli for many years.

The African researchers said, although the human-elephant conflict is more significant in Asia, elephants in Asia benefit from the historic and cultural identity its people have with them. “Visitors to Sri Lankan national parks are predominantly country nationals. Our Minneriya-Kaudulla Elephant Project will capitalise on this cultural identity with elephants by encouraging the public to participate in the study and by contributing educational material toward a special elephant program being developed for area schools. Making the project’s elephant ID database accessible online and stimulating local people and national park visitors to become familiar with individual elephants, to photograph them and to send in behavioral and geographical information, we aim to give people a sense of ownership and a connection with individual wild elephants. This exchange of information will provide the project with vital information about associations, behavior, habitat use and areas of conflict, while simultaneously inspiring wonder in the behavior and voices of elephants thus increasing understanding and decreasing conflict” they further commented. .

The Ambesoli conservationists further said, “Together with Manori we will develop and maintain a long-term study of social behavior and demography of the Minneriya-Kaudulla elephant population along the lines of the Amboseli study - naturally with a special focus on communication. We think that such a study - that uses the individual recognition approach - will benefit conservation and welfare of Asian elephants and is long overdue. And our involvement in this project will allow us to speak with more authority for both species. We will spend about a month a year in Minneriya and we are very excited about it! We’ll continue our Amboseli work as well.”

The Ambesoli project researchers noted further, “We are currently rebuilding ElephantVoices to include our new outlook and so that we can finally host more of our vocalization-related work (audio) – which will now include both species!”

Visitors to Sri Lankan national parks are predominantly country nationals. The Minneriya-Kaudulla Elephant Project will capitalise on this cultural identity with elephants by encouraging the public to participate in the study and by contributing educational material toward a special elephant program being developed for area schools. Making the project’s elephant ID database accessible online and stimulating local people and national park visitors to become familiar with individual elephants, to photograph them and to send in behavioral and geographical information, we aim to give people a sense of ownership and a connection with individual wild elephants. This exchange of information will provide the project with vital information about associations, behavior, habitat use and areas of conflict, while simultaneously inspiring wonder in the behavior and voices of elephants thus increasing understanding and decreasing conflict.

The announcement of the establishment of the Minneriya project said Manori has secured local funding for the start up of the project and more fund raising efforts will be done in the months to come. Joyce is joining Manori for a kick-off field-trip during second half of September.

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