(MY) Pymy elephants

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Sunday December 18, 2005 - The Star

 

Human activities affecting jumbos

 

BY RUBEN SARIO

 

KOTA KINABALU: A six-month study of Sabah's unique Borneo pygmy

elephants has found that the movements of the pachyderms were

noticeably affected by human activities such as logging and farming.

 

The research involved five female elephants fitted with collars and

tracked via satellite.

 

Pygmy elephants are smaller and gentler compared with other Asian

elephants. They are found only on the north-east tip of Borneo, mainly

in Sabah.

 

Dr Christy Williams, who leads WWF's Asian elephant conservation

efforts, said the affected elephants spent more time on the move

compared with the ones in more remote areas.

 

" One of the collared elephants living near an area with human

activity, covered a third more ground than did another which lives in

a more remote part of the jungle, " she said in a statement yesterday.

 

She said satellite tracking also showed that most of the elephants

spent at least some of their time in oil palm plantations or near

areas inhabited by humans, which led to conflicts with the people.

 

" In recent years, much of the elephants' habitat has been converted to

plantations, " she said.

 

She said the elephants' diet consisted of at least 162 plant species.

 

" No one has ever studied pygmy elephants before, so everything that we

are learning is groundbreaking data, " she said.

 

The study was a joint venture project between WWF-Malaysia and the

Sabah Wildlife Department, with support from the US Fish and Wildlife

Service.

 

The public can track the elephants' movements by logging on to

www.worldwildlife.org/ borneomap.

 

Since elephants live in matriarchal societies, WWF collared only adult

female elephants as each would represent the movements of a whole

herd.

 

Dr Williams said wildlife researchers would be tracking these

elephants for several years to identify their home ranges, and to work

with the Sabah government to conserve critical areas.

 

Project manager Raymond Alfred said the research efforts were to

enable scientists to learn more about the elephants' behaviour.

 

" Elephants are a 'keystone species' and habitat engineers whose impact

shapes the forest in important ways for the many other species with

whom they share their habitat, " he said.

 

Sabah Wildlife Department director Mahedi Andau said the project was

very important and that the results from the study could be used to

assist them in preparing Sabah's elephant conservation plan.

 

The Borneo pygmy elephants were determined by WWF in 2003 to be a

likely new subspecies of the Asian elephant but very little is known

about them, including how many exist today.