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African elephant ( Loxodonta africana ) select less fragmented landscapes to connect core habitats in human‐dominated landscapes
Author(s) -
Gara Tawanda W.,
Wang Tiejun,
Dube Timothy,
Ngene Shadrack M.,
Mpakairi Kudzai S.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
african journal of ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.499
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1365-2028
pISSN - 0141-6707
DOI - 10.1111/aje.12839
Subject(s) - geography , wildlife corridor , metapopulation , fragmentation (computing) , maasai , wildlife , habitat , habitat fragmentation , african elephant , ecology , biological dispersal , biology , population , environmental planning , tanzania , demography , sociology
African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) utilise corridors to access limited resources, that is forage and water scattered across heterogeneous habitats they roam. The existence of small elephant metapopulations depend on the intactness of these corridors to access the scarce resources. Due to the sedentarisation of the previously nomadic Maasai people, elephant corridors have been exposed to increased fragmentation from human‐induced activities across the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya. In this study, we sought to compare the scale of fragmentation between corridors and their immediate landscapes (noncorridors) in the Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya. We used a Brownian Bridge Movement Model (BBMM) to identify corridors used by elephants from global positioning system (GPS) collar data. The scale of fragmentation between corridors and noncorridors was determined using the effective mesh size fragmentation metric (m eff ). Our results showed that elephant corridors were significantly less fragmented ( Wilcoxon sum rank test: W = 6,121.5, p < 0.05) when compared to the noncorridors. The presence of fragmentation geometries in the corridors remains a major cause of concern for wildlife managers as they have the potential to invade and constrict the existing corridors. Our results underscore the need to extend management of elephant habitats to migration corridors outside protected areas.