Viability and management of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population in the Endau Rompin landscape, Peninsular Malaysia
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Natural Resource Management, Population Biology
- Keywords
- abundance estimates, evidence-based conservation, population monitoring, population viability analysis (PVA), translocation, wildlife management, poaching, elephants, human–elephant conflict, applied research
- Copyright
- © 2019 Samsudin et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Viability and management of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population in the Endau Rompin landscape, Peninsular Malaysia. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27729v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27729v1
Abstract
The need for conservation scientists to produce research of greater relevance to practitioners is now increasingly recognized. This study provides an example of scientists working alongside practitioners and policy makers to address a question of immediate relevance to elephant conservation in Malaysia and using the results to inform wildlife management policy and practice including through the National Elephant Conservation Action Plan for Peninsular Malaysia. Since ensuring effective conservation of elephants in the Endau Rompin Landscape (ERL) in Peninsular Malaysia is difficult without data on population parameters we conducted a survey to assess the size of the elephant population, used that information to assess the viability of the population under different management scenarios including translocation of elephants out of the ERL (a technique long used in Malaysia to mitigate human–elephant conflict (HEC)), and then assessed a number of options for managing the elephant population and HEC in the future. Our dung-count based survey in the ERL produced an estimate of 135 (95% CI = [80, 225]) elephants in the 2500 km² area. The population is thus of national significance, containing possibly the second largest elephant population in Peninsular Malaysia, and with effective management elephant numbers could probably double. We used the data from our survey plus other sources to conduct a population viability analysis to assess relative extinction risk under different management scenarios. Our results demonstrate that the population cannot sustain even very low levels of removal for translocation or anything other than occasional poaching. We describe, therefore, an alternative approach, informed by this analysis, that focuses on in situ management and non-translocation-based methods for preventing or mitigating HEC; an increase in law enforcement to protect the elephants and their habitat; maintenance of habitat connectivity between the ERL and other elephant habitat; and a new focus on adaptive management.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.