Lisa Faust, Ph.D.

Destinations: Tarangire National Park, Tanzania and Shimba Hills National Park, Kenya

Dates: Aug. 25-Sept. 7

Lisa’s first stop is Tarangire National Park to meet with Charles and Lara Foley, directors of the Tarangire Elephant Project. Because many elephants leave the park during the wet seasons, and because the human population is also growing, more elephants means increased human-elephant conflict outside the park. 

Friday, August 26
I’ve arrived safe and sound in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania and met up with colleagues Charles and Lara Foley. Here I immediately noticed a striking difference from other parks (Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Lake Manyara). In other parks there are very few infant elephants, and family groups are composed mostly of young (six and older), middle-aged, and elderly females. And for the most part, it is not common to see elephants in those parks whereas in Tarangire there are elephants around every turn in the road.

In Tarangire, not only are elephants abundant, but each family group has many youngsters, from newborns to six-year olds. Of course I knew this would be the case because I’ve been working with the Foleys to model population the growth of Tarangire elephants, but it is still striking to see.

Yesterday afternoon, after catching up with the Charles, Lara and nine-month old Ellesmere Foley, I ventured out with Charles to learn how he collects the demographic data that I’ve been working with as part of my dissertation. Seeing elephants up close from the vehicle, just a few feet away in some cases, is amazing. But I am surprised by how challenging it is to approach a group and identify individuals, especially moms and their calves, when there are often many elephants of the roughly the same age in each group. Very young animals are particularly difficult to identify, especially when most groups are teeming with them.

This morning we’ve been working on refining the demographic database. It’s slow going because we have to dig back through the Foley’s records (and, occasionally, their memories), but clarifying aspects of the database will improve our abilities to predict population growth and model the impacts of various management strategies here in the park.

I’ll continue to work at the Foley’s camp for the next few days, with brief forays into the park to collect data. The camp is quite comfortable but I just can’t get accustomed to analyzing data at a desk while elephants casually wander in virtually every direction.

Did I mention there are a lot of elephants here?

Thursday, September 1, 2005
Greetings from Tarangire. I’ve spent the last five days working hard with the Foleys and we’ve gotten quite a bit accomplished. Charles and I have been going out daily to census different elephant family groups. We drive around the park roads looking for family groups we haven’t spotted recently—when we spot one we approach them carefully in the vehicle and position ourselves to get a view of all members.

In the past few days we’ve seen six different groups. To keep each elephant family group straight, Charles gives them names beginning with the same letters. We identify the adult females by distinctive characteristics—holes, tears, and vein patterns on the ears, or other distinctive traits like broken tusks, scars, etc. We then check whether adult females—usually traveling in groups of three or more—have all the infants they should (no easy task when females usually as many as four calves of varying ages milling around). I’m amazed at how easy Charles makes it look!

We note any missing individuals and any new calves, and then move on to find another group. This information makes up the core demographic information that we’ve been analyzing for our research project together. The other main activity has been poring through data sheets and identification cards; each adult female has a card bearing her picture, identifying information and a list of offspring.

We are working to validate and cross-reference all demographic data, like birth dates, death dates, and family relationships. This data “clean-up” is essential, since it will improve the reliability of our analytical conclusions.

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OK. We finished cleaning up the database about an hour ago, and this afternoon we start outlining our analyses, reviewing the demographic model I’ve built to project the population’s future growth, and making plans for  analyses.

I have another two days here, then must go to Kenya. I’m not sure what exactly will happen there as I’m still waiting to hear from my colleague. Although the translocation program started last week, it was quickly halted when the first of the elephant-transporter trucks broke down under the weight of a bull. The current status is “indefinitely postponed,” so we’ll see what happens in future days.

All for now—
Lisa