This year, I’ve decided to dedicate a portion of the proceeds of my annual calendar to the amazing research and conservation work Bring The Elephant Home is doing on elephant behaviour, habitat, and wellbeing in South Africa and Thailand (and soon other parts of Africa, like Zimbabwe, Uganda, and more!).
The calendars are available in my photography shop. Just select the SHOP button, go to Specialty Products, and scroll down to the calendars.
Currently, I’m only able to ship within the US, but send me a note if you’re out of the US and want a calendar…we’ll figure something out.
While you’re in my photography shop, browse around… you may find something fun as a holiday gift. The photo lab I use does amazing prints, and we can ship pretty quickly for holiday gifts.
I started writing this post on a dark plane flying North over the African continent, visions of elephants and African wildlife swimming in my head. Now I’m home, back from another trip to Kariega with the BTEH team to do additional observations and work on an exciting elephant ID project that blossomed from that first trip.
How it started: I went down to South Africa last March sort of blindly. I had signed up for a volunteer program with an NGO called Bring The Elephant Home to help the researchers do behavioural studies on elephants at Kariega Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape. We spent 10 days there, in the field and in the classroom, learning about and studying these amazing creatures. Just a few months before that trip, they had removed the interior fences in the reserve, so one of the key questions we tried to answer was “what happens with the eles when you remove fences?” I wrote about that amazing experience here.
Fast-forward a year and a few months, and these elephants have been living in their expanded habitat for some time now.
5 observations after another 10 days in the field:
The herds seem to be thriving. There are new-ish calves and lots of mud wallowing. The eles really seemed jovial and happy.
All the herds seem to be spending a lot of time in the Harvestvale section of the reserve. There are still 3 matriarchs with GPS collars (Half Moon, Beauty, and Bukela), and the BTEH team has tracked them over the past year in a sort of migration pattern with the seasons. Last year, Bukela’s herd was very cautious about crossing over into their new territory, so it could be that the Kariega West herd has benefitted most with the new habitat.
They’ve made new friends and acquaintances. One of the most beautiful things to observe was that all the herds seem to be affiliating, if not intermingling. Time will tell whether this leads to new mini-herds or one giant one.
The bulls are roaming about in bands of 2s and 3s, and even these guys have crossed clans. We observed Matchstick hanging around with Holy Moly, and Sean (one delegate from each of the herds). Maybe Matchstick (from Harvestvale) is playing mentor – or host – to the other two (from KW).
Kambaku was in musth. He’s from the Kariega West side. It seemed probable that he mated with Mavis (from Harvestvale), so the bulls are probably enjoying the fact that they have more ladies to choose from.
Exciting news.
Last year, I left feeling like there had to be an easier way to ID individual elephants. So I organised a Hackathon team to work on an AI model that would help speed up and automate the identification process. While we didn’t fully solve the problem for Hackathon, we came close… and that led to a partnership of sorts between our Hackathon team, Bring The Elephant Home, Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, and WildMe, the internationally-known NGO that works to identify and track endangered species worldwide. To date, WildMe’s WildBook population monitoring doesn’t have elephants in their re-ID model because they didn’t have a large enough data set to train the AI. So through this collaboration we are going to first train their re-ID model to include elephants, and then work on a mobile app that can be used in the field.
To say that we are very excited is an understatement!
More exciting news.
All research points to the fact that habitat expansion leads to thriving herds, lower environmental impact, less human/elephant conflict, less human intervention needed for elephant population control, and a healthier ecosystem for many of the interdependent species in the area. Together with the Elephant Reintegration Trust, BTEH is working on creating the world’s first elephant rewilding reserve. BTEH also supports initiatives to create an “elephant corridor” in the Eastern Cape that aims to pull down more fences between private reserves and build a network of connected wild spaces up to Addo National Park.
This year’s program felt like both a summation of research as well as a lens into the future. Many thanks to Antoinette and Brooke at Bring The Elephant Home for creating these exciting programs to promote elephant wellbeing and more successful human-elephant coexistence.
More to follow, with photos and stories, from an amazing 10 days with the elephants and the BTEH volunteer team.
What draws us to elephants is a mystery. Or is it? They represent wisdom and strength and empathy. They are revered in Thailand and in India and elsewhere in Asia. Ganesh is the Hindu elephant god of new beginnings, the remover of obstacles and bringer of wisdom and luck. His name in Thailand is Phra Phikanet.
Across Asia and Africa, these magical and mystical creatures are worshipped in temples and simultaneously loathed in the fields, where their land is being encroached upon by farms and development. A mere “drive by” by a herd can decimate a family’s crops in minutes.
I think I’ve always been charmed by the magic of elephants, intrigued by their human-like behaviours, disgusted by humans’ treatment of them and their habitat. My first visit to Africa gave me a up-close look into those long-eyelashed orbs and I was smitten. It’s not a secret that Ganesh is something of my patron saint, and it’s certainly no surprise that I’m something of a wildlife freak. So when an opportunity to participate in Bring the Elephant Home’s volunteer program, assisting scientists with crucial behavioral research to learn more about social structure, welfare and habitat usage, I couldn’t apply fast enough.
Fast-forward 8 or 9 months, and I’m beginning to pen this on my flight home, coming down from the elephant high that has been my status quo for the last couple of weeks.
I joined the group in Port Elizabeth (recently renamed to Gqeberha), on the Eastern Cape of South Africa: a couple from the UK, a handful of Californians, and a student studying ele behaviour at a University in Johannesburg. From PE, we went up to our post at the Kariega Conservation Center at the Kariega Game Reserve. I posted a blog at the beginning of our time there called What Happens When You Drop a Fence, outlining our initial observations and the main research objectives.
What was it like?
So the 8 of us volunteers, 2 PhD researchers, and a local ecologist ventured out into the thicket of Kariega Game Reserve each day looking for elephants. While like something out of a dream, it also felt much harder than it seemed like it should have been. One might think elephants are so big, and how could you miss them, right? Well, crazy ele fact #1: they move silently. I mean, so silently that you could be sitting in a spot for a while and see or hear nothing, but a moment later, you could glance over your shoulder and see an animal the size of a Land Cruiser standing just metres away, trunk curled, sniffing in your general direction. While you’d think they’d make themselves known by heavy footsteps, their massive feet are so cushioned that they walk as if clad in slippers. In fact, more often than not, we’d know they were nearby only from the branches snapping rather than anything else (the tracking collars, when working, didn’t hurt either 😉).
Day 1
That first afternoon we went out on a game drive to get our sea legs, as it were… we saw zebra and white rhinos and giraffes and warthogs (Pumba!) and of course a few elephants. Even though it was just a couple of hours on the reserve, and we got a flat tire just before dusk and had to wait a while for another vehicle to come and bring us a spare and a new jack, it didn’t feel like a harbinger of doom for the week. Instead, it felt like the beginning of a cool adventure. Especially when I looked up and realised that the giraffes we had been watching on the other side of a hill began to creep in closer to get a peek at what we were up to out there in the scrubby thicket.
The first full day was a series of lectures on why we were there, classes on how to do elephant identification, exercises in what to look for, behaviour-wise, and a slew of what to do when things around age and sex and different behaviours and dung sampling and using the Zoomonitor app to record said behaviours. It felt like a lot.
I mentioned to my manager that we had elephant school that first day. He replied that he had heard they are good learners. Us humans, though… the jury was still out.
One of the first lessons was ageing elephants. It’s done by relative size, facial features, and behavioral characteristics. Calves (<1) can walk underneath an adult cow. Juveniles (1-4) are still suckling but may or may not have tusk buds (squeee!!!). While Intermediates (5-8) may or may not look like sub-adults (9-15), they are weaned and the females take on more and more “big sister” duties. Sub-adult bulls spend less and less time in the center of the herd as they mature and become more independent (and, you know, more like naughty teenage boys!). Adults (15 and up) come in different shapes and sizes, depending on whether they are bull or cow. I learnt so much just this first day on these different stages, not least that bulls don’t even come into their first musth until they are about 25, while cows can start having their own calves by about 11.
Once we had a decent grasp on ageing, we moved on to sexing (size, head shape, body configuration, rear view). About half-way through this lesson I felt like I might fail elephant school altogether, so I was glad that the professionals would be with us in the vehicle to help out with our ID follies!
The team uses the SEEK (System for Elephant Ear Knowledge) system which incorporates a set of features and markings in addition to body condition on a scale from 1 (emaciated) to 5 (chubbo) to identify and code the targets of our observations. I’m grateful for the visual aids we were given, as well as the Elephant Voices ethogram website which we were encouraged to review prior to arriving. This was beginning to feel like work.
The last part of our training day was to review the different behaviours we were to observe and track: continuous behaviours like locomotion, grazing, browsing (and identifying the differences therein), and all-occurrence behaviours like head shake, sniff, play spar, trunk curl, trunk to face (and whose trunk to or from whose face)… again I was appreciative of the technology at hand – the app into which we were to record said behaviours and the myriad PowerPoint decks and references that had been prepared for us novices.
As the long day wound down, we received our marching orders: review the materials and get ready for an early wake up call. We were going into the field in the morning, then breaking up into groups of 3, one to observe behaviour, one to do elephant ID, and one to be the photographer.
One can only guess which role I was more than glad to take on.
Stay tuned for more adventures from a citizen-scientist perspective. And be sure to take a look at Bring the Elephant Home’s updates page for more stories from our time at Kariega.
THIS JUST IN: I just launched my new print store… take a look HERE. And use coupon code TGM-15 for a 15% site-wide discount!
Big news at Kariega Game Reserve! In December of 2023, in association with the Kariega Foundation’s habitat expansion project, BTEH supports the removal of one of the internal fences connecting the Kariega West and Harvestvale areas of the park. A key mission of the project is to give herds on opposite sides of the fence (and river) access to a broader habitat. I mean, who wouldn’t want a larger area in which to play and explore? One of BTEH research objectives is to see, in short, what happens when you remove fences and how that impacts herd behaviour and population health.
I’m reporting from the BTEH elephant research program at Kariega, March 2024. This is the first time BTEH researchers Brooke Friswold (PhD student) and Antoinette van de Water (PhD) have observed the different herds here post-fence removal. It’s an exciting time to be a part of this! [Aside: if you’ve always wondered how to get involved with elephants, are a little nerdy about research stuff, and think the idea of a safari seems a little too much like a canned experience, you’ve got to try this program! 😉]
Drive by
Collecting data
Dung sampling
Materials reclaimed from taking down the fence
Brooke trying to get a signal
Here are 5 observations (expected and otherwise) after fence removal:
New places to explore! Not surprisingly, we’re already seeing herds and individuals that were once confined to the Kariega West area exploring into the Harvestvale section, and vice-versa. Elephant location, movement and interaction are monitored via GIS (geographic information systems) tracking and low range radio collars which were fitted to 6 elephants of varying ages/sexes in August of 2022. Fitting collars is a complicated and costly operation, requiring veterinarians, helicopters and scientists (plus some luck), so it was devastating to learn that more than half of the collars have failed (full collaring report here) due to twisting and malfunction. The elephants are fine, but the science is impacted. Findings during our time here in March will assist with on-the-ground identification, behaviour tracking, and dung sampling (yep!).
You see Brooke tracking Beauty’s herd via a telemetry antenna contraption in the pictures above because a 4th of the 6 radio collars is malfunctioning.
The bulls are a little, erm, randy. Think of it like spring break: you put a bunch of single college guys in a new environment with a bunch of cute and possibly available chiquitas, what do you get? Well, scientifically, many of the males (bulls) have gone into musth, or a state of pre-musth (though per the science-y folks, this observation is still anecdotal but we found out this week that there are 3 (!!!) bulls in musth right now here at Kariega). In general musth is a stage of the mating cycle when adult or sub-adult bulls experience testosterone levels of 60 times greater than average. This makes them do weird and not-so-weird things like Following sub-adult females (cows), Touching genitals (their own and cows’), placing their “Trunk over back” of desirable cows, chasing zebras, walking around Sniffing the air, wandering far and wide, and generally getting excited for the “new meat” in the vicinity. We’ve observed and logged many of these behaviors in the Zoomonitor app, and we’ll see how this plays out (stay tuned to the BTEH updates page for details).
Amazing social excitement and interaction. In our first days of observation here, we noticed some of the Kariega West and Harvestvale herds have meshed. Our first morning, we saw the Half Moon herd mix with Beauty’s herd. This of course throws off the ID database, which had neatly arranged individuals by herd by area, and means that our ID work this month will be crucial to not only identifying individual cows and bulls assimilating into different herds, but also tracking the potential new herds that may form as a result (see point 2). Per Antoinette, “It’s amazing to observe elephants that fully have the freedom to explore and interact and make new social connections. This is the best way to see elephants completely in their element.
Some are travellers, some are not. Kariega’s elephant population is roughly 75 individuals. Elephants are social and highly intelligent: emotionally and mentally. They are said to never forget, and can hold onto traumas just like people. Herds are traditionally led by an old and wise female (I began writing this post on International Women’s Day, so of course they are 😉) So with all the exploring and commingling some of the elephants are doing, one matriarch, Bukele has still not crossed the river from Kariega West to Harvestvale. Whether it is because the way to the other side is around or that the river is saltwater and thus creates a natural fence (elephants love to swim and bathe, but prefer freshwater), this remains to be seen. Camera traps, GIS tracking, and future research trips will help answer these questions…and more.
Happiness is contagious. During our initial drives, we observed un-stressed, curious, social, and thriving elephants. As with humans, lack of stress reduces cortisol, which leads to overall better health and well-being. Additionally, seeing happy and healthy elephants put a smile on the face of everyone in our vehicle. Per Antoinette, “What we observed yesterday is like the best example of how range expansion contributes to animal well-being.” When elephants are happy, so are the people watching them. Want to learn more?
When I asked Brooke what her biggest surprise was, she commented that it is so exciting to see the different herds socialising and commingling like this. “It remains to be seen,” she said, “whether this is just exploratory because it’s new, if the new commingled herds and interactions will persist, or if they will go back to their original structures in time.”
Interested in getting involved (highly recommend!)? Go here. Now.
A final note… this blog has been cross-posted on the BTEH website (HERE). Please take a look at all the amazing articles they have on their site. The eles will thank you.
THIS JUST IN: I just launched my new print store… take a look HERE. And use coupon code TGM-15 for a 15% site-wide discount!
