CENTRAL LIMPOPO RIVER VALLEY ELEPHANT RESEARCH
TRACK THE ELEPHANT HERDS

In order to understand why elephants move where they do when they do we need to collar several elephants throughout the study area. Currently 5 herds and one bull have been collared within the Northern Tuli Game Reserve since November 2004.

Meet the collared elephants

The first four elephants were collared in November 2004 as part of a trail project to determine the movements of elephants in the Central Limpopo Valley. All four females were collared with satellite collars. The four collared herds were Tuli 1, AG, CHR and Tuli 4. In August 2006 herd AG’s collar was replaced with a cellular collar and herd PA was also collared with a cellular collar. Rocky was the first bull to be collared in November 2006. Here follows a brief description of each of the collared elephants and the herds they belong too.

• Tuli 1
• Agatha (Herd AG)
• Clotilda (Herd CHR)
• Tuli 4
• Pamina
• Rocky

Studying the different movements patterns of the respective herds there is several obvious questions as why do the home range sizes of the different herds differ, why do all the herds concentrate along the Shashe River from August to October, what is it that elephants are looking for in an area? These are some of the questions that we hope to answer through monitoring the collared herds and comparing the movements to rainfall patterns on the reserve, vegetation and the state of the vegetation in the reserve at the time. Just looking at the past 3 years there have been a marked difference in the rainfall on the reserve in terms of areas receiving rain as well as when the rain was received. The rainy season at the end of 2005 started very late and the months August to pretty much the beginning of December were very dry with the highest mortalities in elephants as well as all other species in the reserve over this time period. The beginning of 2006 however we received good rains and the elephants responded to the change in the vegetation. The rains started early again, with the first rain for the season in October with good rains in November and December. Unfortunately this was also the end of the rainy season and no little rain was received during January and February 2007. Most of the rain also fell in the western side of the reserve. This could explain the higher number of elephants in Uitspan, Loensa and the Motloutse during December and January. Driving in Uitspan early in January was mind blowing. While the rest of the reserve had little grass and hardly any flowers Uitspan was a mixture of bright yellow and green. No wonder all the elephants congregated in this area.

I hope that as the data comes in from the collars and vegetation monitoring we will be able to understand the factors affecting elephant movements a whole lot better and just maybe get to the bottom of the very pressing question “how do elephant populations control there own numbers?”

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