African Conservation: Making Room

Africa conservation: Making room

Emma Marris, Nature 448, 860-863 (23 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/448860a;

Published online 22 August 2007

Elephant populations are soaring in some parts of Africa. Emma Marris discovers there's no single way to fit them in amid the people.

The car creeps towards the left as the driver tries to get as close as possible to the group of elephants foraging at the road's edge. The elephants walk silently, communicating in companionable purrs. The loudest noise is the crackle of the tough foliage they are eating.

"You're crowding Agatha and she's going to have to press into the bush to get by," says Katie Gough from the back seat. Gough, based at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, has been studying these animals for four years, and can tell most of the elephants apart by the wear and tear on their ears or by idiosyncratic wrinkles. She is right about Agatha, who, slowly moving her enormous body into the thorny shrubs, turns her head and gives the occupants of the car a look that everyone reads — scientific prohibitions on anthropomorphization be damned — as reproachful.

References
Kerley, G. I. H. & Landman, M. S. Afr. J. Sci. 102, 395–402 (2006). | ISI |
Johnson, C. F., Cowling, R. M. & Phillipson, P. B. Biodivers. Conserv. 8, 1447–1456 (1999). | Article | ISI |
Slotow, R., Balfour, D. & Howison, O. Pachyderm 31, 14–20 (2001).
IUCN African Elephant Status Report, http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/afesg/aed/pdfs/aesr2007.pdf