Elephant Research in Northern Tanzania
The West Kilimanjaro and Lake Natron regions of northern Tanzania support upwards of 800 elephant and are important ecological links between National Parks in Tanzania and Kenya. The juxtaposition of extensive agricultural fields and rural pastoral communities interspersed within the diverse natural communities of northern Tanzania however, pose significant challenges for elephants moving through the open areas.
African Wildlife Foundation and its partners such as Tanzanian Wildlife Company, Robin Hurt Safaris, Elephants Without Borders, Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, Tanzania Game Trackers Safaris, Freidkin Conservation Fund, Monduli District Council and local communities managed to attach eleven satellite collars in order to understand elephant population movements, key habitat utilization, corridors, and human elephant interactions. This brings the total collared elephants to 20 and helps Tanzanian born, Alfred Kikoti to further his PhD studies with the University of Massachusetts. The ARGOS satellite will monitor these units and the location data is transmitted every two days via email for the next two years before the collars are removed. This movement data, will be incorporated into a GIS mapping database and can then be overlaid with satellite imagery of vegetation, settlement and climatic variation in order to achieve the above aims. Standard VHF transmitters are also incorporated into the satellite units and facilitate ground and aerial tracking when necessary.
The operation took place over a period of two weeks and all contributing partners can be congratulated on its success. The cooperation between these organizations was outstanding and hopefully this shows a pattern of things to come, with government departments, conservation NGO’s and commercial companies all working together for the benefit of Tanzanian Wildlife.
