Population Status and Conservation of Wild and Captive Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park, Myanmar

Surendra Varma

Abstract


An investigation on the status and conservation of both wild and captive Asian elephant was carried out inAlaungdaw Kathapa National Park (AKNP). Population status of wild elephant was done through indirect methodof estimating population number and the survey on human-elephant conflict was through visiting villages locatedwithin and around the park. The status of captive elephants was assessed through recoding the morphologicalmeasurements and relating its influence on overall body condition of the captive elephants managed there. Theresults showed a dung encounter rate of 0.85 km-1 for the park and it indicated that the elephants were found tobe using only the southwest regions of the park (3 dung piles km-1) and other routes encountered no dung piles. Amean dung density of 1633.85 km-2 was estimated resulting in a mean elephant density of 0.64-elephants km-2 forthe park. The human- elephant conflict was nil and no human casualty or household property damage has beenreported. It was found for most of the elephants in the camp that the measurements of height and neck girth wereidentical and that relationship is possible only if the elephants are in good condition.

Keywords


Population Status, Habitat Usage Pattern, Human-Elephant Conflict, Captive Elephant Management, Conservation

References


AECC. 1994. GAJAHA - A Computer Program for Estimating

Elephant Densities. Asian Elephant Conservation

Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Burnham, K.P., Anderson, D.R. and Laake, J.L. 1980.

Estimation of density from line transect sampling of

biological populations. Wildlife Monographs 72: 1-202.

FAO. 1982. Proposed Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park,

Preliminary Master Plan UNDP/FAO Nature Conservation

and National Parks BUR/8-/006, FAO of the

United Nations, Rangoon. 42 pages.

IUCN. 1989. Burma, Conservation of Biological diversity,

World Conservation Monitoring Centre. pages 1-13.

Myint. A. 1994. Preliminary estimates of the abundance of

wild elephants in Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park.

Report submitted to the Wildlife and Nature

Conservation Division, Ministry of Forestry, Yangon,

Myanmar. 14 pages.

Tun, N. 1997. Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park (Brief

Notes), Report submitted to the Wildlife and Nature

Conservation Division, Ministry of Forestry, Yangon,

Myanmar. 17 pages.

Salter, R.E. 1983. Summery of Currently available information

on internationally threatened Wildlife Species of

Burma. Working People Settlement Board, FAO of the

United Nations, Rangoon, Burma. 28 pages.

Sukumar, R. 1989. The Asian Elephant: Ecology and

Management. Cambridge Studies in Applied Ecology

and Resource Management. Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge. 251 pages.

Hut, Y. 1993. Management of Wild Elephants in Myanmar.

Report submitted to the Wildlife and Nature Conservation

Division, Ministry of Forestry, Yangon,

Myanmar. 4 pages.

Zaw, K. 2000. Capturing and training wild elephants for

utilization in timber harvesting. Myanmar Forestry,

July 2000: 6-8.


Full Text: PDF

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

COPYRIGHT of this Journal vests fully with the National Instional Institute of Ecology. Any commercial use of the content on this site in any form is legally prohibited.