Publication Date
2013
Journal or Book Title
Animals
Abstract
Increasingly, habitat fragmentation caused by agricultural and human development has forced Sumatran elephants into relatively small areas, but there is little information on how elephants use these areas and thus, how habitats can be managed to sustain elephants in the future. Using a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar and a land cover map developed from TM imagery, we identified the habitats used by a wild adult female elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) in the Seblat Elephant Conservation Center, Bengkulu Province, Sumatra during 2007–2008. The marked elephant (and presumably her 40–60 herd mates) used a home range that contained more than expected medium canopy and open canopy land cover. Further, within the home range, closed canopy forests were used more during the day than at night. When elephants were in closed canopy forests they were most often near the forest edge vs. in the forest interior. Effective elephant conservation strategies in Sumatra need to focus on forest restoration of cleared areas and providing a forest matrix that includes various canopy types.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/ani3030670
Volume
3
Issue
3
Pages
670-679
Special Issue
Conservation of Endangered Animals and Protection of Their Habitats
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
License
UMass Amherst Open Access Policy
Recommended Citation
Sitompul, Arnold F.; Griffin, Curtice R.; Rayl, Nathaniel D.; and Fuller, Todd K., "Spatial and Temporal Habitat Use of an Asian Elephant in Sumatra" (2013). Animals. 419.
https://doi.org/10.3390/ani3030670