The Akagera Elephant Project was established in 2018 with the aim of understanding and quantifying the population and behaviour of elephants in Akagera National Park, Rwanda. The focus was on identifying individuals and families as a basis for elephant management and conservation, while building local capacity.
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Akagera's founder population of 26 young elephants were reintroduced in 1975, the remnants of a cull of elephants in Bugesera region. This is the first attempt to identify individuals in the population, now estimated at around 130 animals, using identification techniques developed by the Amboseli Elephant Project, Kenya. Data is shared by means of an online Elephant ID Database, (also available offline), and used by local guides in Akagera to recognise individuals. Information on individuals, clans and locations is shared in a central Whatsapp group throughout the year, with data collected whenever local guides are working in the park and during largely tourism-funded field seasons. Following two field seasons in 2018 and 2019, approximately 70 of approximately 130 individuals have been identified and 2 main clans recognised. Local guides, park staff and students receive training in elephant identification techniques through the project, improving their skills and knowledge.
This project demonstrates how conservation-focused tourism can benefit local capacity-building for conservation and provide useful information to park managers that can assist in wildlife management.
Please find detailed instructions on how to arrive at CATAPULT (1 Rochester Park) here.
About Tammie:
Dr Tammie Matson is a zoologist and author with over twenty years experience working on conservation challenges in Africa, Asia and Australia. She is passionate about working together with local people to find solutions that benefit communities and wildlife.
Her PhD on the Habitat Use and Conservation of the Threatened Black-faced Impala of Namibia (University of Queensland, Australia) and subsequent work led to the first national management plan for the subspecies and the development of a reintroduction plan for black-faced impalas to their historic range, the communal conservancies of north-west Namibia.
Tammie worked on human-elephant conflict mitigation among the San Bushmen in Nyae Nyae Conservancy, Namibia, and later in Zambia and India through her work at WWF-Australia. She has been a lecturer at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) and James Cook University (Singapore) and headed the National Species Programme at WWF-Australia. Tammie worked with Asian TV star, Nadya Hutagalung to raise awareness of the illegal ivory trade through the Let Elephants Be Elephants campaign and National Geographic Asia film while based in Singapore between 2012 and 2014.
Dr Matson developed a project to undertake the first elephant identification database for the elephant population in Akagera National Park, Rwanda in 2018, working closely with park staff and local community guides. The aim of the project is to understand and quantify the population and behaviour of elephants in Akagera National Park with a focus on individuals and families, while building local capacity among guides, park staff and students to conserve elephants. She is an Honourary Research Fellow at the University of Rwanda and the Managing Director of Matson & Ridley Safaris.