Africa Wild

Hi RP,

Thanks for linking to Dr Joubert! Will love to hear his full input once he is back...

It would be particularly interesting for the experts to peer review the paper and the rationale...in terms of elephant management on the whole continent it seems crucial.

As for the politics in play..who knows how it may or may not have impacted the paper...again I guess the best way to tell is for it to be peer reviewed. Applied stats can be a hairy exercise in the way a model is chosen (assumptions for it to be valid, choosing the correct general linear model to use, choosing the tests or significance indicators to use etc), so there will always be stuff to check - besides the input from the ecological side.

"He also says there is currently a significant increase to be seen in the populations of calves of all ages, indicating that growth of the population is carrying on exponentially regardless of environmental factors." As far as I know, growth has slowed to 2% a year from a high of over 6% - though usually would exponential growth not imply numbers far below ecological equilibrium?

There is an organisation I have found called Elephants Alive, who have conducted quite long studies on the movement in ellies in greater KNP - do you have any links to them in case they could give input?

Hmmmm.... I think if we could change the entire Kruger into one huge Alfalfa field , then we could probably keep a couple of 100 thousand ellies there

We don't know the numbers as there has been no proper expanded aerial census for many years, Ginzy, despite money budgeted. Therein lies the rub, unfortunately. The "studies" are linked to the guesstimate statistical "surveys".

Richprins wrote: ↑Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:04 pm We don't know the numbers as there has been no proper expanded aerial census for many years, Ginzy, despite money budgeted. Therein lies the rub, unfortunately. The "studies" are linked to the guesstimate statistical "surveys".

I don't know if that is too much of an issue though - the papers methodology doesn't use current elephant numbers as a predictor variable. Where it would make a difference is perhaps in a second order effect, where more elephants would change the EVI used in the model given impact on vegetation - but from my limited understanding on how that's calculated I am not sure if this would impact too much either.

Ginzy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 19, 2018 6:41 pm There is an organisation I have found called Elephants Alive, who have conducted quite long studies on the movement in ellies in greater KNP - do you have any links to them in case they could give input?

You could ask them to post here

Ginzy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:07 pm
I don't know if that is too much of an issue though - the papers methodology doesn't use current elephant numbers as a predictor variable. Where it would make a difference is perhaps in a second order effect, where more elephants would change the EVI used in the model given impact on vegetation - but from my limited understanding on how that's calculated I am not sure if this would impact too much either.

Yeahhh , its like throwing sand in the air so as to confuse the issue A tactic used when you are not quite sure of your facts/conclusions

Ginzy, Dr Joubert has returned from Hols and is hard at work on the reports!

Thanks for the update RP- very keen to get feedback!

The link to "Elephants Alive" : http://elephantsalive.org/

http://elephantsalive.org/wp-content/up ... ect-SP.pdf

........Our research has also
provided very valuable
information to SANParks, which
requires detailed information
SPECIES ID ‒ MAMMALS | RESEARCH PROJECT
on how elephants move relative
to their resources in order to
better manage their impact on
the vegetation. Elephants were
culled from 1967 to 1994 in an
attempt to keep the population
densities around 6 000. Today,
the population is closer to
20 000, so understanding their
movements is critical to any
decisions required across the
Great Limpopo Transfrontier
Park as a collective whole......