Livestock a threat to elephants

The elephants of Samburu are now facing greater danger from overgrazing livestock than poachers, says a study published in an online journal.

Published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the six-year study suggests that climate change and human encroachment on wildlife space are threatening the already endangered elephants.

“Fifteen years ago, there was a lot of poaching in the area, and elephants were getting killed,” says Thure Cerling, leader of the study carried out by the University of Utah, “but since then, security has improved considerably, so people are moving in with cattle. Now there’s a suggestion the elephants are finding it harder to compete with the cattle than with the poachers.”

Grass and shrubs

The team followed a family of three elephants in the Samburu and Buffalo Springs national reserves and found that for the animals to reproduce, they need to alternate between eating a diet of grass and shrubs.

Two weeks after the rains begin, an elephant, the study says, usually switches to a grass diet to bulk up for pregnancy and birth. But the team observed that when seasons changed and there was prolonged drought or livestock had fed on the early grass, the elephants did not conceive.

The study also showed an intricate interplay in the timing of the rainy season, the growth of grass and when the elephants breed and give birth.

Five weeks after the rains start, when the proportion of grass in the elephants’ diet reaches maximum levels, females in the 800-member Samburu-Buffalo Springs elephant population are most likely to conceive.

The elephants give birth 22 months after conception, with the peak of births just in time for another rainy season to provide water and grass for offspring.

“It is clear that the grass provides nutrients that the elephants presumably need for successful reproduction,” said study leader Cerling.

Save the Elephants, a organisation based in Nairobi, was also involved in the study.