Elephant conservation is a major priority in southern Africa, but habitat loss and urbanization mean the far-ranging pachyderms are increasingly restricted to protected areas like game reserves.
Elephant conservation is a major priority in southern Africa, but habitat loss and urbanization mean the far-ranging pachyderms are increasingly restricted to protected areas like game reserves. The risk? Contained populations could become genetically isolated over time, making elephants more vulnerable to disease and environmental change.
A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pretoria in South Africa demonstrates how African conservation managers could create and optimize elephant movement corridors across a seven-country region. The study offers a map showing landscape connections that would support elephants’ habitat needs and allow for more gene flow among populations.
“Other research groups have integrated genetic and spatial data before, but usually it’s done on a more local scale. Ours was the first to combine both types of data for southern African elephants across such a large geographic area,” said lead author Alida de Flamingh, who completed the study as part of her doctoral program in the Department of Animal Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at Illinois. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
Read more at University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
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