Elephant Surveys in Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia

 

Simon Hedges training PERHILITAN and WCS staff on dung surveys. Photo: David Lawson (CITES MIKE)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Between June 2006 and May 2007, WCS and the Government of Malaysia (GoM) will conduct elephant surveys in Taman Negara. 

The survey teams will use the rigorous dung-count based survey methods recommended by the CITES Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme. These methods have been used successfully by WCS in other Southeast Asian forest sites. 

Taman Negara represents one of two CITES MIKE sites in Malaysia and the GoM needs to complete an elephant survey in Taman Negara before the next Conference of the Parties to CITES in June 2007. WCS will assist the GoM meet this target and indeed has already run a training course in elephant survey methods for the GoM. 

Detailed information about the true size of Taman Negara's elephant population is also needed urgently for more immediate management purposes, not least because human-elephant conflict reduction strategies in West Malaysia currently involve moving "problem elephants" to Taman Negara. In addition to the line transect based surveys, the teams will collect detailed elephant distribution data using the 'recce' transect methods pioneered by WCS researchers in Central Africa and subsequently modified and used successfully by WCS elephant survey teams working in Indonesia. 

Project Goals and Objectives

The overall goal of this project is to help the Malaysian authorities meet their obligations to the CITES MIKE program and, more generally, to help develop a holistic elephant plan for West Malaysia that will help balance development and conservation, and which will help conserve wild elephant populations in Taman Negara and elsewhere in West Malaysia. A major goal of the project is to train GoM staff in current elephant survey methods, thus increasing their capacity to implement an effective elephant management strategy. The specific objectives for the first  year are:

  1. Estimate the size and distribution of the elephant population in Taman Negara and determine the threats to the elephants and their habitat, and the spatial and temporal distribution of these threats.

  2. Training and capacity building for protected area staff and other Malaysian conservationists and wildlife managers, focusing on current sampling-based survey methods and data analysis.

These goals directly address two of the most pressing needs in Asian Elephant conservation discussed by Blake & Hedges (2004), namely: (1) up to date and accurate baseline data on the status of major elephant populations; and (2) increased capacity of wildlife departments in those countries with wild elephant populations.

Survey Teams:

Dr Jephte Sompud - Coordinator
WCS Team leader for Merapoh - Nurul Fatanah
WCS Team leader for Tj Mentong - Nurul Huda
WCS Team leader for Kuala Tahan - Cynthia Boon
plus three extra teams during line-transect surveys between February and May 2007.

Progress to date:

  1. Dung-survey training with PERHILITAN officers and rangers, conducted by Drs Simon Hedges and Dave Lawson (30 May to 8 June).

  2. CITES MIKE IT training with PERHILITAN officers and rangers, conducted by Drs Dave Lawson and Jephte Sompud (10-15 June).

  3. Pilot surveys at three sites (Kuala Tahan, Merapoh and Tg. Metong) in Taman Negara to test field methods: showed that dung-count methods are preferable to fecal DNA based capture-recapture surveys (19 June to mid-July).

  4. Four field trips at these sites to locate elephant dung and determine decay rates (17 July to 21 Oct). These surveys will continue until April 2007.

  5. Training in Recce Survey Transects by Dr Simon Hedges (22-26 August). Subsequent surveys included RST as well as dung counts.

Acknowledgements:

WCS Malaysia acknowledges the in-kind contribution of staff, field accommodation and equipment by PERHILITAN and CITES MIKE towards this project. Additional financial support were also provided by the Alexander Abraham Foundation, CITES MIKE , Denver Zoo and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Reference: Blake, S; S Hedges. 2004. Sinking the flagship: the case of forest elephants in Asia and Africa. Conservation Biology 18:1191–1202