Lessons learned in elephant management

Providing total protection to elephants through established PAs (Protected Areas) came with challenges! The protection realised has effectively minimised the need for elephants to move seasonally (especially outside PAs) to find food, water, and refuge. This reality eliminated natural elephant population constraints and altered previous spatial distribution. Previous elephant movement to find basic requirements no longer necessitated them to relocate seasonally, directly encouraging population increase within the PA. Relieved from these constraints, guaranteeing 'safe refuge' areas, exasperated by providing artificial water opportunities, has enabled them to redistribute throughout the PA range, concentrating populations more evenly. Additional persecuted elephants were attracted into the PA through outside landscape disturbance achieved through urban encroachment; the landscapes, now contrasted radically, opened up to commercial and community agriculture, providing widespread modification to the landscape; unnatural changes encroaching upon the PA, opening up the natural vegetation found there, replaced with improvised food opportunities.