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There's still great excitement within SA National Parks on the Garden Route following the recent photographing of an elusive Knysna elephant.
The elephant was captured this week on a trap camera installed by the Landmark Foundation which is busy with research on leopards in the Knysna forest.
Sanparks scientist, Lizette van der Vyver, says while there are sightings every year, each sighting of the elusive and reclusive elephants is greeting with great excitement.
She told Algoa FM News that while the still photo does not provide details of the elephants sex, they're waiting for video footage which will hopefully provide more information for their data-base which spans 30 years.
Van der Vyver says while early research methods focussed on sightings and photographing the elephants, they found that this may be invasive and unethical.
A transcript of the interview follows below:
How significant is the latest sighting?
"Well, its significant because these elephants, first of all, are very rare. There are only a few of them left. Historically they belong to a larger population that was actually a continuous population from Limpopo all the way through to the Northern Cape and down the coastline."
"They are basically, with the Addo elephants, the last remaining Cape coastal elephants. And, because there's so few left and because they so elusive, they're very shy, I think when you get a visual or footage on them it's very exciting."
What happens next?
"Basically, we are running quite a few projects on the Knysna elephants. And, on the current population status we've got a 30 year-long data base (on) sighting and activity such dung and elephant sightings ..."
"So these recent photographs are just being added to our long term data base. Unfortunately the footage we have from the landmark foundation at the moment is not clear enough for us to make a specific identification on this specific elephant that they captured with their trap camera. But, we are awaiting video footage that have they they've promised and that will hopefully give us a clearer visual on this elephant."
"What this information could give us is extra information on a specific identification and sex identification of this specific elephant," she said.
"We used to previously concentrate our research efforts on seeing and photographing the elephants until our preliminary data showed that this could be disruptive to these elephants. They tend to completely change their movement direction, their speed of movement after being sighted and photographed. So, about three of four years ago we decided that it was potentially not ethical and we decided to rather concentrate on our research efforts on the actual dung of these elephants."
"There are so many amazing new technology and scientific techniques available that you can do using dung as a material. One of the projects were are running at the moment is to look at dung measurements from which you can infer a population age structure from that and then we're also sending samples off to hormone laboratories that will be looking at the reproductive hormones and and also the stress hormones."
"From that we can get a better idea about the reproductive potential of these group of elephants and we can also get a better idea of whether there are certain areas in the park where they may be more stressed when they move through it which may give us a better idea of why they are so evasive and elusive."
Last Sighting?
"The last sighting was last year by a few of our rangers. We do actually have quite a few sightings per year by either the contractors that work in and around the forest and fynbos area and also sometimes the public have spotted the elephants before as well as the Working for Water teams."
