September 2024 – E-MAILGUIDE

A new study co-authored by World Wildlife Fund, Ecoexist, and Elephant Connection, reveals the largest ever GPS tracking database of elephant movement across Southern Africa.

Published September 9, 2024, in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the analysis is based on approximately 4 million GPS locations logged from nearly 300 tagged elephants and their associated herds traveling throughout the world’s largest land-based transboundary conservation area, the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), between 2009 and 2023.

What is KAZA?

In 2011, Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe committed to collectively manage a valuable and biodiverse 106 million-acre, or 200,000 square mile region, nearly the size of France, allowing the movement of wildlife across international boundaries between protected areas, to improve dispersal opportunities and increase their chance of survival.

The Zambezi, Kwando, and Okavango rivers flow through the region. Woodlands, wetlands and grasslands provide critical habitat for lions, wild dogs, and the planet’s largest population of savanna elephants.

At the heart of the KAZA vision is the premise that conservation of the region’s rich natural resources can be the economic driver of a region, resulting in thriving landscapes where wildlife and communities coexist.

These countries converge in the Kavango and Zambezi river basins, creating a vast conservation and ecotourism destination. KAZA includes several national parks and natural wonders like the Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls.

A group of African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) crossing the Chobe River in Chobe National Park in Northern Botswana.

Chobe River, Chobe National Park, Botswana

What are the benefits of large-scale transboundary collaboration?

Transboundary collaboration and the creation of wildlife corridors like KAZA offer numerous conservation benefits:

Enhanced Biodiversity Conservation: By pooling resources and coordinating efforts, countries can more effectively protect and manage biodiversity. KAZA is dedicated to conserving a wide range of species, including the world’s largest population of savanna elephants and significant populations of lions, wild dogs, and cheetahs. This is particularly important for migratory species that move across national borders.
Landscape Connectivity: Wildlife corridors facilitate the movement of species, crucial for maintaining genetic diversity, enabling seasonal migrations, and allowing animals to adapt to climate change by moving to more suitable habitats.
KAZA provides critical habitat that allows wildlife to move across borders and between protected areas, which is essential for maintaining genetic diversity and ecosystem health.
On this topic, I always think of Jane Goodall’s film, The Hope. In the period where she’s describing her transition from researcher in the bush to activist and public advocate for chimpanzees, she says, “One of the biggest problems today in conservation is the fragmentation of habitat. Populations isolated from other populations need to be genetically viable. Corridors allow connectivity. Local communities see value of it to their own future (water, education, etc.)”
Ecosystem Functioning: Transboundary conservation areas (TBCAs) support ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling, water flow, and species dispersal, which are essential for the health of the environment.
Political and Social Cooperation: Establishing TBCAs can strengthen relationships between neighboring countries and communities, fostering peace and cooperation through a shared commitment to conservation.
Expanded Protected Areas: Transboundary conservation can lead to the expansion of protected areas, which is vital for the long-term survival of many species and the reduction of habitat fragmentation.
Sustainable Development: These initiatives often promote sustainable economic development by integrating conservation with other land uses, such as ecotourism, which can provide income for local communities while preserving natural resources.
KAZA’s woodlands, wetlands, rivers, and grasslands support not only wildlife but also the local communities that depend on these ecosystems for their livelihoods.
Research Opportunities: Scientists benefit from the larger, more diverse landscapes of TBCAs, which provide greater opportunities for research and monitoring of ecological processes and wildlife populations. That’s exactly what’s happened in the case of this WWF study.
Climate Resilience: By maintaining larger, connected ecosystems, TBCAs can enhance the resilience of natural systems to withstand and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Transboundary collaboration in conservation leads to more effective environmental stewardship, promotes peace and cooperation, and supports sustainable development, all while providing critical habitats for a wide range of species.

Why map wildlife movement?

WWF author Callie Cho explains, “Mapping current migration patterns is a crucial first step toward creating effective conservation strategies and protecting these critical animal movements.”

In the same week that the KAZA elephant study was released, WWF shared a new global digital atlas of Earth’s zebra and other ungulate populations—The Global Initiative for Ungulate Migration (GIUM). The maps showcase the movements of various species, including Tibetan antelope, reindeer, and guanaco.

From wildebeest in the Serengeti to caribou in the Arctic tundra and zebra in Namibia, ungulates across the globe complete some of the animal kingdom’s most impressive land-based migrations.

Ungulate migrations play a crucial role in shaping ecosystems:

supporting large, healthy herds
providing essential prey for predators and scavengers,
helping to sustain biodiversity on land, and
creating unique conditions that support diverse plants and animals.

For thousands of years, these migrations have been vital to human survival, creating deep cultural connections with Indigenous and local communities. But ungulate migrations are disappearing rapidly.

Despite their importance, ungulate migrations are in peril due to human activity. Poorly planned infrastructure (roads, fences), agriculture, and settlements fragment landscapes and create deadly obstacles for migrating herds.

Limited mapping of migrations has hampered ungulate migration management and conservation. By combining animal tracking data, historical records, and the knowledge of local and Indigenous communities, scientists are building a global migration atlas—a powerful tool for driving conservation efforts and informing policy at all levels.

The Global Initiative for Ungulate Migration (GIUM) was launched in 2020, uniting over 80 scientists worldwide to map and analyze ungulate movements. Their efforts culminated in this interactive atlas which highlights high, medium, and low-use migration corridors for a diverse range of species.

Crucially, the map pinpoints where these routes intersect with human-made barriers like roads and railways to guide conservation efforts, infrastructure planning, and policy decisions with cutting-edge data on ungulate travel patterns.

Where did the KAZA elephants go?

Extensive elephant GPS data can provide much the same guidance in and around KAZA. It turns out elephants rely on multiple methods to move around the region.

The data showed that in KAZA elephants use:

micro-corridors,
protected area pathways and
macro-corridors to move across the transborder landscape.

These corridors and pathways are essential for elephants and other species to access water and avoid direct contact with human settlements. Now we have a map for them.

The main breakthrough of the study, though, may be in the new way—or scale—of seeing and mapping movement.

WWF Lead Wildlife Scientist and primary author Robin Naidoo said:

Our study has provided a first of its kind movement-based conservation blueprint for elephants in KAZA. A key aspect of conservation is understanding and securing landscape connectivity. However, small sample sizes have prevented researchers and policymakers from developing comprehensive connectivity conservation plans based on animal movements in the KAZA region, until now.

The Scale is Unprecedented – New Ways of Seeing

What both the elephant GPS data and GIUM database have in common—in addition to a lead author—is the use of new data measurement and management tools to envision wildlife movements on a an unprecedented scale.

Recently at the Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, on a couple different panels, conservationists, explorers and filmmakers boldly proclaimed that we are living in a Great Age of Discovery and Exploration.

It might seem counterintuitive in this day and age. I’ll confess: I was skeptical.

They were referring, though, to the transformative impact new technologies, (especially advances in visual imaging, but also DNA sequencing, machine learning and artificial intelligence) are having on exploration and conservation. New technologies are revolutionizing the ways we see, understand and share the world.

These two studies mapping migrations exemplify this new age of discovery. New ways of seeing, tracking, and managing data allow us to “see” wildlife migrations—and collaborate and share the results with others in a way that makes a positive difference.

African elephants in Botswana elephants africa KAZA migration mapping corridors conservation eco tourism

Photographed on Nat Hab’s Secluded Botswana Safari © Joey Sudmeier

Want to see KAZA for yourself?

Whether you’re planning a family safari, a custom safari for your own group, looking for a photo expedition, we’ve got you covered in the KAZA! Nat Hab offers river cruises as well as overland safaris in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Check out all of our African safaris here.

Nat Hab travelers are treated to private wildlife viewing from the comfort of their accommodations

Nat Hab Expedition Leader © Richard de Gouveia

The post 4 Million GPS Data Points: WWF Study Reveals Elephant Migration Corridors first appeared on Good Nature Travel Blog.

In late spring through midsummer, brown bears gather in high numbers in Chinitna Bay’s salt marshes to graze on the protein-rich sedges and other plants. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

Alaska’s Chinitna Bay on Cook Inlet near Lake Clark National Park and Preserve is the very heart of coastal brown bear country, according to the National Park Service. And now, having visited it, I can say I wholeheartedly agree.

Here, in the estuaries where rivers flowing out of the mountains meet the sea, food is almost free for the taking from early spring until the bears return to their dens in the fall. I say “almost” because the bears do have to dig, fish or forage for it.

Salt marshes are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, and they are a prominent feature of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve’s coastline. They act as buffer zones between freshwater and saltwater, creating a brackish environment affected by tidal fluctuations. This makes these areas unique by harboring plant communities of salt-tolerant grasses and sedges that support a wide range of animals, including migratory birds, fish, intertidal invertebrates, moose, river otters, other small mammals, shorebirds, songbirds, waterfowl and a dense population of coastal brown bears.

> Wildlife Guide: Brown Bears

Public Domain (Created by Candice Gaukel Andrews)

Visitors flying to Chinitna Bay get an overview of the salt marshes that the bears graze in for much of the summer.

Coastal salt marshes are crucial for coastal brown bears

Coastal salt marshes comprise less than 1% of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, yet they are critical for the survival of the park’s brown bears. Each spring, brown and black bears congregate in these marshes and meadows to graze on the fresh, green sedges after winter hibernation. With their fat reserves depleted and with young cubs to feed, bears emerge from their dens in need of high-protein nutrition. Young sedges in the salt marshes are a vital, early-season source of that needed nutrition.

During low tide, bears leave the salt marshes for the adjacent mudflats to dig razor clams and other bivalves. Tidal streams bisecting the salt marshes provide nursery habitat for a variety of juvenile fish. In late summer, salmon enter the salt marsh streams on their way to their spawning grounds. As these fish arrive, bears transition from sedges to salmon in preparation for the upcoming winter months.

Coastal salt marshes are essential for the Earth

The salt marshes are important in protecting the vibrant ecosystem of Chinitna Bay by limiting coastal erosion caused by ice, water and wind; and by buffering wave action and trapping sediment. They also act as filters for water-quality improvement. As saltwater flows through a salt marsh, marsh grasses and peat (a spongy matrix of decomposing organic material, live roots and soil) act as enormous natural filters of pollutants—such as heavy metals and waste—as well as nutrients and sediments. These natural filters can be thought of as water filters that sift through impurities, resulting in clean drinking water; only in this case, these filters are holding onto key nutrients necessary to sustain life.

The coastal marshes of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve may represent a minor habitat by acreage in comparison with the vast, alpine interior, but their ecological value looms large when accounting for the species diversity that the habitat sustains. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

In addition, coastal wetlands, such as these salt marshes, are effective carbon sinks, storing carbon within their plant communities and soil instead of releasing it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Plants act as sponges, soaking up carbon into their roots and the soil, effectively holding twice as much carbon as the atmosphere. Most soil carbon is derived from photosynthesis, which takes carbon from the plant material into dense root systems for storage, creating a cyclic carbon storehouse. Plants use energy from the sun to chemically combine carbon dioxide with hydrogen and oxygen from water to create sugar molecules.

Animals that eat plants digest these sugar molecules to obtain energy. Respiration, excretion and decomposition release the carbon back into the atmosphere or soil, thus continuing the cycle. Ultimately, then, salt marshes are important in helping to moderate global climate conditions at an early stage in the Earth’s complex carbon cycle.

Coastal salt marshes are “bear proof”

The coastal marshes of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve may represent a minor habitat by acreage, in comparison with the vast, alpine interior with its hundreds of lakes and waterways. However, the ecological value of coastal wetlands carries a lot of weight, when we consider the biodiversity that the habitat sustains.

All you have to do is look to the bears (see below) for proof.

Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,

Candy

Visit the brown bears and salt marshes of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve at our private Alaska Bear Camp!

Since it is so challenging to reach Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, it sees far fewer visitors than some other Alaskan parks. Most fly in by small, private plane. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

Ninety-five percent of brown bears in the United States live in Alaska, and Lake Clark National Park and Preserve supports a healthy and stable population of them. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

Red foxes are also found throughout Lake Clark National Park and Preserve—and much of Alaska. They can have many color phases, including black, red and silver. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

“Brown” and “grizzly” are common names for the same species; the difference between the two is geographic location, which influences behavior, diet and size. Those that live in coastal areas are called brown bears, while inland bears that have limited or no access to marine-derived foods are called grizzlies. Both have the distinctive large shoulder hump; long, curved claws; and a wide head with a concave profile, often described as “dish-faced.” In Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, both coastal and inland bears belong to the subspecies “Ursus arctos horribilis”; and, generally, all are referred to as brown bears, although both terms are acceptable. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

Coastal habitats are a critical, abundant “supermarket” of protein sources that the bears need after emerging from hibernation in the spring. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

Lake Clark National Park and Preserve’s coast also provides brown bears with protein-rich sedges—such as “Carex ramenskii” and other salt-tolerant plants—that are necessary for a bear’s survival and for feeding young cubs. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

Chinitna Bay is proof of the value of coastal wetlands: they give us a glimpse of the truly wild. ©Candice Gaukel Andrews

The post Photo Essay: The Brown Bears and Salt Marshes of Chinitna Bay, Alaska first appeared on Good Nature Travel Blog.