Sea Turtle and Forest Elephant Migrations in Africa

Health Evaluation of Sea Turtles on the Gabonese Coast and Forest Elephant Migration Studies in Central Africa
Sharon L. Deem

14 January 2001
It is 6 AM and sleep is hard to find. I have been working on the coast of Gabon at Pointe Pongara, just across the bay from the capital city of Libreville. My field work here has started each night at 12 AM for the past few nights. My team and I have been working until just before sunrise in hopes of finding female leatherback turtles as they come on to the beach to build nests and lay their eggs. I am working with an African Non Governmental Organization dedicated to sea turtle conservation, Adventures San Frontièrs (ASF). If work goes well during this pilot visit, the Field Veterinary Program will set up a long-term health monitoring program directed at the four sea turtle species; leatherback, hawksbill, green, and olive ridley, that have important foraging and nesting sites along the Gabonese coast. This FVP project is timely as health threats to the survival of the seven extant sea turtle species, all of which are listed as threatened or endangered, has become more evident in recent years.

My role during this pilot visit is to forge a collaboration with the ASF team and to collect biomaterials from the turtles. Over the last four nesting seasons (November - April), ASF staff have patrolled the beach where my work is being conducted. Their objectives have been to quantify the number of females that come to the beach and to place tags on the females for mark-recapture studies. Additionally, the team tries to educate local people and tourists about the threats to long-term sea turtle conservation in this region. Threats that have been very apparent to me during my nights walking on the beach include the large number of logs that wash up on the shores from poorly managed logging operations and the weekend tourists that disturb the nesting females by crowding around using flashlights making noise and in some cases, traveling on dune buggies.

Additional threats to sea turtles along the coast of Gabon are the illegal poaching of eggs and legal hunting of turtles, both as sources of protein. Another possible threat to survival of these ancient animals may include petroleum products associated with oil drilling in the region and contaminants from other industries. We also do not know if the debilitating condition called fibropapillomatosis, which is presently a worldwide epidemic found in many green turtle populations, is prevalent in turtles in Gabonese water. The samples I collect during this and future visits (which will include sample collection from other sea turtle species, including green turtles) should help determine threats to the health of sea turtle populations in Gabon.

My job the past few nights has been to not approach any turtle until she is busy with her task of laying eggs. Leatherback females, like other sea turtles, have a stereotyped nesting behavior which involves emerging from the ocean, determining an appropriate site for nest building, building the nest, depositing her eggs, covering the nest, and returning to the ocean. A process that can take over an hour. I am able to collect blood during the few minute period of mid egg-laying, when the female turtle enters a trance-like state and is not disturbed by my work. If not for this trance when the female is oblivious to my presence, it would be very difficult to get samples from any of the leatherbacks as they can be larger than 500 kg. And believe me, a 500 kg turtle that is not interested in “working with me” can be very dangerous as she slaps her flippers and bull dozes over the sand. Thus far I have collected blood from 8 turtles. These samples have been processed in my field laboratory back in camp. Once CITES permits are obtained, I will be able to bring the samples back to the USA and submit them to various laboratories for diagnostic testing. For now, I will work a few more nights here at Pointe Pongara in hopes of getting blood samples from a number of female turtles.

Taking advantage of the fact that I have traveled to this side of the globe, I will soon continue on to Congo and then the Central African Republic to join WCS field researcher, Steve Blake to work with the elusive forest elephant.

25 January 2001
Steve Blake, the WCS forest elephant researcher, 4 pygmy and 2 bantu trackers, and I arrived yesterday at our base field camp in the Dzangha-N’doki National Park of the Central African Republic. Our travel to this campsite was anything but easy as Steve and I have spent the past 4 days in 5 African cities, on 3 commercial airline flights, and 1 pirogue trip up the Sangha River, before meeting up with our tracker team and then getting another pirogue ride and finally a one hour truck drive into the forest to arrive at our campsite. All this traveling has led me to believe that movement in Central Africa is the most difficult on the planet as plane schedules change continually, luggage loss is common, and routes to remote areas often involve a great deal of imaginative thinking to figure ways to get from point A to point B. However, we arrived safely and the whole team has been in good spirits with lots of enthusiasm for our work. We are based at Bai Hokou Camp, a WWF research station where Chloe Cipolletta and her colleagues are conducting a western lowland gorilla habituation project. Our single objective during this stay in Dzangha-N’doki is to place Lotek (GPS/VHF) radio-collars on three forest elephants.

In October 2000, Steve and I had first worked together in the Nouable-N’doki National Park, Congo which is contiguous with Dzangha-N’doki Park. During a four week period, we visited 6 bais, walking 300 kilometers throughout the park with a team of 3 pygmies and 3 bantu (some of who have rejoined us for our current work) in hopes of placing four Lotek radio collars on forest elephants in the park. Unfortunately, due to an unseasonable wet rainy season and the low number of elephants coming to the bais, we were able to collar only a single bull elephant, of approximately 30 years, during this 4 week hike around the forest. Thus during this second visit, with a base camp to work from, the dry season upon us which results in large numbers of elephants coming to the bais to get water, we have high hopes of accomplishing our task in 2 weeks or less.

It appears that our work this trip will be much easier and more productive than my visit in October. It is the evening of our first day of elephant “hunting” and as the sun sets, we have one new bull forest elephant wearing a collar. As we approached the first bai, Goubounga II, at 7:45 AM, we saw a large bull elephant drinking water. Ten minutes later I had moved away from Steve and Mambeleme (our head tracker) to a position about 50 meters from the elephant. There I hid behind a little shrub on the bai edge. I was now ready to dart the male. The next hour was one of the most beautiful experiences for all of us (including the elephant as the drug I use is a morphine derivative that induces a state of euphoria!) since the procedure went like we had practiced together for weeks. Once the dart hit the elephant, he looked around trying to locate from where the odd object, now firmly placed in his back leg, had come. Within seconds though he sensed my presence and thankfully ran off towards the other side of the bai. That was the cue for Steve to radio the rest of our trackers, sitting about 100 meters back in the forest, to come join us. The job of tracking the elephant now began. It is important that we remain at a safe distance but are close enough to find the animal as soon as the anesthetic takes effect, so I can assess that he lands in a position with his trunk extended and that there is no compromise to his breathing.

The pygmies tracked so well (a skill that can never be fully appreciated by people who don’t know about the obstacles that are a constant in the forest!) that we sighted the bull 8 minutes after I had fired the dart. He was standing, but definitely sedated. Three minutes later he gently went into recumbency at which time I slowly approached to ensure it was safe for the team to begin our work. During the time we worked with the bull only one unplanned event occurred.

Yesterday, Steve and I had prepped the team on how we would like all immobilization procedures to occur from darting, tracking, to actually working around a “sleeping” elephant. Most of the guys on our team are more familiar with elephants at a long distance away, or in years past close to elephants they had killed as a source of meat. Being next to a sleeping elephant was not something they were use to, which I suppose is safe to say for most of us! Our one real rule was NOT to jump on the elephant. Simple.... Only minutes after the team had started to work with the elephant and just after I placed my pulse oximeter on his trunk to monitor heart rate and oxygen level, I looked back at the elephant’s body. Standing on top of the elephant and smiling from ear to ear was the pygmy tracker, Lamba, who in the excitement obviously forgot the one rule. He was off in a few seconds and I knew it would give the team something to laugh about in the days to come. 20 minutes later the bull was wearing his radio-collar, I had all the biomaterials for the health study, everyone was within a safe distance, and I delivered the anesthetic antidote. It was 8:30 AM and our day was just beginning.

Just as our day began, our day ended with almost as much excitement. During our last afternoon forest walk to look for more elephants to collar who did we see again in Goubounga II bai? There, drinking only a few meters from where I darted him this morning, stood our collared bull! Steve, Mambeleme and I watched him for 15 minutes or so before he became aware of our presence and headed into the forest on the far side of the bai. It was great to see “our” bull, only hours following anesthesia, happily eating and wearing the collar that will provide us a glimpse into his world. The day definitely ended on a satisfying note.

26 January 2001
The team has just arrived back in camp, all of us exhausted, after a full day in the forest. Our day began at sunrise when we headed into the forest in search of female elephants to place our remaining two collars. This morning I had no idea what the day was to hold. After visiting 4 bais and finding no female elephants that I could dart. (There were a few groups of females and some females with infant calves. It is not safe to dart a female elephant in either situation as it can be especially dangerous for people and elephants alike.) On our way back to camp, we passed by Goubounga II and heard an elephant snoring in the distance. This was a sound that neither Steve nor any of the trackers had ever heard in their many years in the forest. Steve, Mambeleme and I went ahead of the team again to check out the elephant. On the edge of the bai, we found an emaciated female elephant lying on her side, snoring. We did not know what to think. However, 15 minutes later it became apparent that she was dying as her breathing became shallower as we stood and watched. It was just a matter of time before she died. We headed back to camp to collect my equipment for performing a post-mortem (necropsy). When we got back to the bai, the elephant was dead and rigor mortis had started. The afternoon was spent doing what we believe is the first field necropsy of a forest elephant that had died of natural causes. Around 4:15 we were packing up our equipment and preparing for our walk back to camp. To everyone’s surprise, a female with her calf entered the bai on the far side and began to drink and enjoy the sun. We could not believe that the smell from the dead elephant and from the 7 people doing the necropsy had not kept her away from the bai. And better yet, her juvenile calf was old enough that Steve and I judged an immobilization to be safe. Within minutes, Steve, Mambeleme and I were heading around the edge of the bai, running thru a waist deep swamp, in hopes of getting me into darting position prior to our cut off time limit of 4:45 PM, which we established at the start of the “hunt” due to fading light conditions. At 4:31 PM from a distance just over 50 meters, I was ready to dart the female. Although not as smooth as the bull the day before, due to the calf “protecting” its mom which made working a challenge, and the sudden appearance of many female elephants coming in for the late afternoon “meeting” at the bai, we did get her safely collared and all biomaterials collected. The sun was setting as we started our walk back to the campsite.

29 January 2001
It is late in the evening, I have just shared some beer with Steve and the team in celebration of our day. Tonight there are four forest elephants (including the one we collared in October) wearing our radio-collars. These four elephants will provide us the data that will begin to unravel the migration patterns of forest elephants in the Dzangha-N’doki and Nouable-N’doki National Parks. At 4:40 PM tonight I darted the final female. We are all relieved that she and her calf are fine and that the team has finished the immobilization procedures with no casualties to elephants or people. In fact, during the 50 minutes it took the trackers to locate this elephant, Steve and I had contemplated whether the dry forest conditions were making tracking near impossible. We questioned one another, “if the trackers do not find this female, should we abort our work to catch the final elephant?”

The biggest concern for me is that we won’t locate an elephant after it has been darted, as I won’t be sure the anesthesia went well. Also without administering the antidote, I can not be sure an elephant will recover okay. Tracking an elephant, through the forest, after I have darted it is one of the most unpleasant experiences I know. Somehow though with this final female, 50 minutes after I had darted her, Mammadou found the female with her calf still at her side. The team followed Mammadou to where he had found her and I quickly injected more of the anesthetic agent into her ear vein, as the effects from the dart I had administered almost an hour previously, were wearing off. The calf was by mom’s head for most of our work and it was rapidly getting dark. Therefore, we worked quickly to place the collar and collect all the biomaterials.

After dark we headed back to base camp. Many thoughts went through my mind during the walk home to camp tonight. The fact that the team had accomplished our task in 6 days was just one. I also thought of my two remaining jobs that lay in head of me for my “work” in Central Africa: a forest walk to observe the gorilla group that Chloe is habituating and a visit to Andrea Turkelo at Dzangha bai where I am told more forest elephants may congregate in an afternoon than I have seen during my trips to capture them. This I want to see. Oh...and I also have to travel out of the Central African forest and get back to the States. Let’s hope this proves easier than my travel to get here!

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