Study Area

While issues of elephant conservation are important across Africa, our research focuses primarily on southern Africa where populations are largest. Southern Africa is home to almost 60% of the total elephant population! The recent formation of several international protected area networks offers large areas for elephants, making study of their spatial patterns and impacts incredibly important.

Current research focuses on two protected areas, Chobe National in Botswana and Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa. Chobe is home to some of the highest densities of elephants on the continent, allowing investigation of the impacts of concentrated elephants. The park lies at the heart of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, which spans five countries with a total area of 220,000 sq km, roughly the size of Italy. With such a central location, the information gained in Chobe can help inform conservation over a much wider area.

Addo is a succulent thicket ecosystem, very different from Chobe. While the Greater Addo Ecosystem continues to expand as new protected areas are added, our research focuses primarily on the Main Camp and Colechester sections of the park, where the vast majority of the elephants exist. Eventually, it would be interesting to compare elephant dynamics in nearby reserves with lower numbers of elephants to develop a better understanding of the impacts of varying densities of elephants.

2 thoughts on “Study Area”

  1. Thanks a million for actually putting your name on your work. I am in the middle of doing an online research report on African Elephants for my bio class and am required to have 8 online authored sources and 4 authored journals. Very few websites actually have their name on their work, so just know it’s highly appriciated by us stressed out young people! K thanks

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