Save the Elephants pioneered GPS tracking of elephants.  With the support of Safaricom and Vodafone Foundations we continue to be very high profile in the field.  In February 2004 we launched our GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) Animal Tracking Project.  This new cell phone technology allows us to pinpoint animals, and to download an almost continuous stream of data, while affording a longer battery life than before. The overall objective is to develop, implement and replicate the new collars for tracking elephants and other important species.

The deployment of this new technology helped us to acquire highly detailed spatial data, which are now being used for landscape and conservation planning in the Ewaso watershed in the Samburu, Laikipia, and Isiolo Districts of Northern Kenya.  The innovative of the project attracted a great deal of interest from the media and won an award from the GSM Association, in the field of “Mobility in the Environment”. We now intend to lift the process to an entirely new level by applying the lessons learnt to a wider multi-species context.

The elephant movements recorded by collars thus far have been integrated into a grid analysis system across the Ewaso ecosystem from which it was possible to define priority areas for conservation.  The information is successfully helping identify migratory corridors and the connectivity of districts, safe havens and various land units used by elephants. It is assisting in the planning of farming areas and is informing policy on fencing, poaching and animal reintroduction. The result is a reduction in the risk of human/wildlife conflict.

From our tracking research some exciting findings have emerged. We detected unusual movements in the elephant population during the severe drought of early 2006 that alerted management to a gross shift in the range of some elephant families from Samburu and Buffalo Springs national reserves to an area South East of Isiolo.  This rare movement had not been recorded before, and highlights the effect of short-term environmental perturbations that have considerable importance in the planning process.

Another highly original outcome was from combining the GPS tracking data with isotope tracking of diet in elephant tail hairs.  This was used to reconstruct the history of what the elephants ate during the year.  This allowed us to understand the feeding strategies of the Samburu elephants and how some had taken to raiding crops to supplement their diet in areas outside protected areas, as this could be traced in the isotopic signature along the length of the tail hair. (Cerling et al., 2006)

In Laikipia and in the Imenti Forest, for the first time we have data on the nocturnal and seasonal crop raiding of elephants measured in precise detail. Strategies to reduce crop raiding are being developed by Max Graham’s PhD Study.

A most significant development for conservation has been the use of the project data in the first Ewaso Landscape Planning Workshop, which was attended by all leading public and private stakeholders from the area in January 2006.  Our data on elephants provided critical maps showing the most important areas that need to be safeguarded for the future of elephants, even though some of these are outside officially protected areas or private wildlife sanctuaries, like the new Northern Rangelands Trust. This exercise highlighted the importance of gathering movement data on keystone species as an integral part of landscape management.

The overall collar performance and tracking data has significantly improved, and we have shared these benefits widely with other scientists and wildlife managers.  Now we are piloting a new geo-fencing project on Ol Pejeta Ranch.  This technique warns small-holders and management authorities of the approach of crop raiding elephants, and may lead to more humane and effective ways of dealing with crop raiding elephants in future.  We plan to develop this in collaboration with Cambridge University in a new major project funded by the Darwin Initiative.

We have also started a pilot tracking project for Grevy’s zebra, with Lewa Conservancy and Princeton University as partners.  We will also tag new critical and endangered wildlife species, like wild dog, lions, and selected herbivores, in collaboration with specialist partners.  Tracking animals will become an integral tool in landscape and conservation planning. The principle project area will be the Ewaso Ecosystem in northern Kenya, but participation will be open for partners with special self-contained projects in other parts of the country where species would particularly benefit.