ATE/AERP Achievements Over 50 Years

The huge musth male Craig is greeted by members of his natal family the CBs, which he left almost 40 years ago; it is these complex histories and dynamics that AERP has revealed

We are proud of our achievements over the 50 years of the project. Of course, we think we could or should have done more. So while we look forward with new plans, it’s also good to reflect on what we have accomplished with our collaborators:

• Collaboration with over 30 scientists and researchers from international academic institutions
• Publication of over 135 scientific papers, articles and edited volumes

Contributions to science; studies covering:

Elephant social dynamics

• Description of multi-tiered elephant social organization
• Leadership roles of matriarchs and the dynamic nature of family units

Female reproductive behaviour

• Description of oestrous behavior, female mating strategies, reproductive investment, and female choice in mate selection
• Calf development and the importance of allomothering for calf survival

Male social dynamics and mating strategies

• First description of musth in wild African elephants
• Independence strategies of young males
• Musth and male dominance in mating behavior

Dynamics of ranging, foraging and demography

• Patterns of landscape occupancy in time and space
• Habitat use, diet choice and nutritional status of elephants
• Importance of seasonal and inter-annual variation in elephant growth, reproduction, and survival over the very long term
• Non-invasive techniques for measuring elephant growth

Understanding elephant cognitive abilities and functions

• Recognition of individual IDs in calls; memory and discrimination
• Role of communication and relationships in the organization of female sociality
• Importance of matriarch knowledge for family survival and reproduction
• Cataloguing repertoire of signals, gestures, and behavior

Population genetics of the Amboseli and Kilimanjaro elephants

Contributions to conservation and capacity building:

• Elephant culture and its implications for conservation of populations
• Understanding human-elephant interactions and the consequences for elephants and people
• Establishment of the first ever consolation program for livestock losses, which has eliminated retaliatory attacks for livestock losses; running for more than 25 years.
• Training 100+ elephant scientists and conservationists from Africa and Asia
• Supporting over 60 students from Amboseli communities at all education levels from primary to MSc since 2002
• Providing expert advice on elephant conservation to national governments and international organizations
• Engagement in conservation in Kenya with government, including as a key architect of the first legally gazetted ecosystem management plan in Kenya

Contributions to the well-being of elephants in captivity:



• Documenting the needs of elephants in the wild, as a baseline for the welfare of captive elephants
• Providing expert statements for cases involving captive elephants, including as the first US science organization to come out with a statement against circuses and elephants being trafficked in captivity for entertainment

Peaceful co-existence between elephants and people is something we have strived for over the 50 years of the project

Digital Revolutions

In the field we are unashamedly old school, recording data on paper--the only research method that has remained stable over the project lifespan. When the study began GPS was still a year from inception and computers were room-sized entities using punch cards. While we embraced new technology in the form of a database, digital imagery, laptops and yes, GPS, the digital home for our complex, precious dataset hadn’t kept pace. Increasingly this was causing us headaches. Five years ago we received a generous donation to allow us to completely overhaul our digital systems.

This was no small task. First, we had to look at how well existing systems worked and where they failed, and what else was needed. Then we had to identify all the relationships between the datasets; e.g. the birth, death, family and mother of an elephant is a different kind of dataset to when we saw them, where, and with which companions. It has been a real labour of love, connecting every piece of data collected over the years. A well-designed database gives users a familiar environment, so each form in the new database mimics our paper data sheets as far as possible. Good databases maximise efficiency by only storing each piece of data once, so for example the list of elephant codes is housed in only one table, and every other piece of data using that information does so using digital linkages. Our build efficiency means that data on more than 3,800 individual elephants, their births, deaths, and reproductive lives, in 54,000 elephant groups recorded over 49 years takes up less than 0.05Gb on a hard drive, and even the architecture that manipulates the information is less than 0.4Gb.

Just some of the ways users can now examine data

We still have a way to go, testing and refining the system, but the power of being able to look at the full dataset, test and share it is a wonderful milestone to have reached in our 50^th anniversary year. We thank our endlessly patient database architect, Fran Root, and the donors who made this possible. We hope to be able to report on many new analyses and collaborations in future issues of this newsletter.

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