N.C. Zoo Team Sucessfully Launches African Elephant Project
ASHEBORO -- A three-member team sent by the North Carolina Zoo to assist with an elephant conservation project in Cameroon, Africa, has returned from a very successful trip.
Dr. Mike Loomis, zoo chief veterinarian, Rod Hackney, public relations manager, and Dr. Bill Horne, a veterinary anesthesiologist with the N.C. State University College of Veterinary Medicine (NCSUCVM), spent the first three weeks of May in the Central African nation where they helped place tracking collars on two elephants.
The project is a joint effort involving the N.C. Zoo, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Cameroon Ministry of Environment and Forests. The goal is to use satellite and radio tracking technology to identify the migration routes of elephant herds in several areas of Cameroon. Armed with that data, WWF and Cameroon wildlife officials hope to develop ways to reduce conflicts between the country's dwindling elephant population and the villages and farms that lie within their ranges. Much of the funding for project is being provided through contributions to the N.C. Zoological Society, the zoo's private, non-profit support organization.
Loomis, Hackney and Horne spent more than two weeks tracking elephants in and around three of Cameroon's largest national parks with a team of WWF field workers, including Dr. Martin Tchamba (pronounced "Chamba"), head of WWF's Cameroon elephant conservation effort called the "Northern Savannah Project."
Tchamba is a native of Cameroon and has spent years studying the human-elephant conflicts that have played a major role in reducing the total elephant population of 20,000. Some 18,000 of those animals are still found in the tropical forests of southern Cameroon. Only 2,000 remain in the savannas and arid terrain of the country's central and northern regions.
According to Tchamba, Cameroon's elephants have increasingly become a source of fear and dread for its people because of the danger the animals pose to both agricultural crops and human life. Elephants seeking diminishing sources of food often stray outside the protected national parks into farmland and other inhabited areas, destroying crops, livelihoods and, sometimes, killing people.
A survey conducted by Tchamba in 1993 found that 27 percent of farmers near the Waza National Park in Cameroon's northern tip lost their entire annual harvests of millet and maize to elephants. As a result, the animals are at risk, not only from poachers that supply the bush meat and ivory trades, but from ordinary people who fear them as well.
By installing specially built tracking collars capable of sending signals to both VHF radios monitored on the ground and to orbiting satellites, conservationists are hoping to be able to predict the elephants' movements and take steps to either alter those patterns or relocate humans in their path. An added benefit for the N.C. Zoo will be a special computer display to be installed at the park near Asheboro later this summer that will enable visitors and staff to follow the elephants' movements as well.
During their stay in Cameroon, the N.C. Zoo team helped WWF field workers install collars on elephants in two national parks, Waza in the north and Bouba Ndjida in the northeast. Attempts to collar a third elephant in the north central region's Benoue National Park proved unsuccessful. Thick vegetation along the Benoue River, where the animals were located in May, made approaching the herds or firing a tranquilizer dart gun too dangerous.
Loomis began discussing the project with WWF, the world's largest wildlife conservation organization, in 1996 as the zoo launched field programs in both Cameroon and Uganda. A special fund-raising effort by the Zoological Society for the elephant project has raised more than $130,000.
The zoo veterinarian's expertise in tranquilizing large animals was needed in order to install the tracking collars. Loomis also used the opportunity to test new procedures, including the first known use of a respirator on a wild elephant under anesthesia. For that, Loomis called on Horne's skills as a anesthesiologist in order to reduce both the physical stress on the elephants during the procedures and their recovery time from the tranquilizer drugs. Both elephants tranquilized by the team were able to get up moments after the procedure and return to their herds.
Horne, whose trip was financed by NCSUCVM, and Loomis, who is also on the teaching staff at the vet school, plan to use the experience to teach other veterinarians and veterinary students about the technique. Hackney went to document the trip on video for a variety of uses by the zoo, including two regular television series. He also plans to write articles about the trip for newspapers and magazines.
WWF and Cameroon officials were so impressed with the technology and skills displayed by the North Carolina veterinarians that Loomis has been invited to return and assist with collaring projects for other species. He also plans to return in February 1999 to continue the elephant project. During the next trip, Loomis hopes to collar an elephant in the Benoue National Park, when the animals should be moving in more open terrain, as well as three elephants in the rain forest region of southeastern Cameroon.
After two weeks of tracking elephants, the zoo team spent much of the last week of their Cameroon stay visiting with officials at the Limbe Botanic Garden. The coastal town of Limbe is located at the base of Mount Cameroon, tallest mountain in western Africa, and the zoo is involved with the botanic garden in a number of projects aimed at saving the rich and diverse tropical plant life of the region.
The zoo is an agency of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
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Date Posted: June 16
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