Movement Behaviour
Movements of Asian elephants have long been shrouded in mystery, especially in the dense tropical rainforests of Malaysia. Together with the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (PERHILITAN) Peninsular Malaysia, we have GPS collared more than 50 wild elephants to better understand their home range size as well as how infrastructures such as roads affect elephant movement. Furthermore, as Malaysia moves forward to become a fully developed country, much of the infrastructure and agricultural areas are now shared spaces with elephants – sometimes resulting in elephants being translocated – due to human-elephant conflict. Together with PERHILITAN, we are monitoring the response of translocation of conflict elephants through the use of GPS telemetry, with the aim to generate data to further understand translocation as a mitigation strategy.