Threatened Southeast Asian Animal – Elephas Maximus

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To help overcome the conflicts between human and elephants and to promote long term conservation of wild Asian elephants, the specialist groups in the countries that are facing the problem of extinction of elephants can develop an elephant conservation program that secures small herds or solitary elephants from fragmented patches and then relocate them to a more viable environment. This will thereby minimize the conflict between elephants and humans and also promote relations between local residents and wildlife authorities (Reading and Miller, 2000). In future, efforts can be channeled towards preventing the loss of forest and preserving wildlife by rejecting the local development of plans by the government, restricting the purchase land and halting any detrimental construction.

To prevent future fragmentation of habitat and growth of human elephant clashes, the land use policies in elephant habitat must be made clear. Development of land for commercial crops such as rubber, oil palm and sugar cane must not be in areas where it will attract elephants. The local communities need to be in charge of deterring elephants from entering agricultural land by maintaining electric fences and other physical barriers. In areas where there are less conflicting areas, the most economically sensible option is a system of compensating farmers for crop losses. This can be further explained when elephants migrate from the native habitat, it can be replaced my villages and farms so elephants can avoid human activity. Development areas should contain corridors for the free movement of elephants and these corridor areas should be legally purchased. It is important that the native habitat linger on traditional migration routes as elephant corridors on developed areas to make the wet and dry season ranges available for the elephants (Humphrey and Bain, 1990).

To conclude, elephant populations are reducing due to the sequence of these factors, the primary ones being loss of habitat due to increasing human settlement, which increases the demand for resource, and habitat fragmentation. The population of elephants tends to get segregated due to habitat fragmentation and therefore that are too small to be viable. Moreover, inbreeding depression can aggravate genetic viability to decrease as the population size is too small, ultimately leading to gradual extinction of the species. To prevent the species from becoming extinct, wildlife corridors can be created to extend reserve lands, integrate land-use policy to mitigate conflicts between humans and elephants, maintain electric fences and other physical barriers to prevent the entry of elephants. Additionally, local farmers can be trained to promote elephant-friendly policies for the protection of crops, analyze elephant raiding strategies from satellite collars and raise awareness among the local community on the significance of elephant conservation can contribute to the long term survival of elephants.

References

Chandran, P. M. 1990. Population dynamics of elephants in Periyar Tiger Reserve. In: C. K. Karunakaran (ed.), Proceedings of the Symposium on Ecology, Behaviour and Management of Elephants in Kerala, pp. 51-56. Kerala Forest Department, Trivandrum, India.

Dawson, S. and Blackburn, T. M. 1991. Asian elephant threatened. Nature 352: 274.

Humphrey, S. and Bain, J. (1990). Endangered animals of Thailand. Gainesville, Fla.: Sandhill Crane Press.

Leimgruber, P., Gagnon, J. B., Wemmer, C. M., Kelly, D. S., Songer, M. A. and Selig, E. R. 2003. Fragmentation of Asia’s remaining wildlands: implications for Asian elephant conservation. Animal Conservation 6: 347–359.

Reading, R. and Miller, B. (2000). Endangered animals. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Sukumar, R. 2003. The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Vancuylenberg, B. W. B. 1977. Feeding behaviour of the Asiatic elephant in south-east Sri Lanka in relation to conservation. Biological Conservation 12: 33–54.

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