Asian Elephant Conservation Program

WCS supports and promotes elephant conservation throughout Asia. This is achived through a combination of research, surveys, practical wildlife management, and policy work. WCS scientists have developed and evaluated new techniques for elephant research, monitoring, and management including improved elephant survey methods and novel approaches to reducing human–elephant conflict. The goal of all WCS’s Asian Elephant activities is to provide high-quality scientifically-sound information in order to protect elephant populations and reduce human–elephant conflict across Asia.

The Human Aspect
Living next door to elephants can be a trial – not for field biologists who relish the opportunity but for poor farmers who suffer nightly raids by their elephantine neighbors. Crop raiding and other forms of human–elephant conflict are a major problem throughout most of Asia. When elephants eat or trample crops farmers are often tempted to retaliate – either by killing the culprits themselves or by helping poachers. In other cases, elephants are captured and often spend the remainder of their lives confined to ‘elephant camps’. WCS is working to reduce human–elephant conflict in Asia and Africa and this has provided opportunities for a profitable sharing of ideas and methods. For example, WCS national staff from Lao PDR and Thailand travelled recently to Zambia to see novel crop protection measures in action.

Threats
Asian elephants formerly ranged from West Asia along the Iranian coast into the Indian subcontinent, eastwards into Southeast Asia including Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, and into China at least as far as the Yangtze-Kiang.  This former range covered over 9 million km².  Asian elephants are now extinct in West Asia, Java, and most of China, but they still occur in isolated populations scattered across 13 Asian countries. However, most of these populations are threatened by habitat loss, poaching, and conflict with humans. Habitat loss and human–elephant conflict, which are often intimately linked, are the biggest threats.

WCS Activities
WCS is working to identify and protect key elephant populations across Southeast Asia. Projects in Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Thailand are using improved dung count based surveys as well as the new techniques of molecular biology to estimate the size and status of elephant populations. This work is instrumental in identifying areas in which elephants are vulnerable to hunting, habitat degradation, and conflict with humans. This is an urgent need because most estimates of forest elephant populations are unreliable according to a recent analysis by WCS’s Steve Blake and Simon Hedges. Knowing how many elephants there are, and where they live, is key to deciding which populations are most important to protect. WCS is also working with local people, especially farmers, to reduce human–elephant conflict. This work involves direct field trials of innovative crop protection measures includling the use of chilies as elephant deterrents.

Capacity-building is a major component of WCS’s Asian Elephant work. It is essential that the staff of resource management agencies in elephant range states understand modern survey, monitoring, and research methods, their limitations, and their implementation. WCS is therefore providing training in survey methods, human–elephant conflict reduction, data analysis, writing and presentation for the staff of Asian government agencies responsible for elephant conservation. As part of this work, we are producing concise easy-to-use manuals in English and local languages.

WCS is about to start a new research project in Indonesia using satellite tags to follow the movements of Sumatran elephants and new genetic techniques to learn more about their lives, particularly their reproductive success in different habitat types. This work will allow us to ask such important questions as ‘What are the best habitat types for Asian Elephants?’ and ‘Why do elephants raid crops?’ The answers will help reduce human–elephant conflict and improve the management of remaining elephant habitat in Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia.

WCS is a major partner of the CITES Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) program in Africa and Asia. This ambitious global monitoring program aims to provide elephant range state governments with the detailed information they need to make effective conservation and management decisions. As part of our contribution to this program, WCS scientists played a key role in the production of a new standard ‘how to count elephants’ manual for the MIKE program and have trained government staff during Law Enforcement Monitoring workshops in Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar.