"This is a new method to understand elephant behavior and help ensure their survival," says geochemist Thure Cerling, the study's principal author and a distinguished professor of geology-geophysics and biology at the University of Utah.
The findings are being published in the Jan. 3-6, 2006, online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and in the journal's Jan. 10 print issue.
The study involved analysis of "stable isotopes" of carbon and nitrogen in African elephants' tail hair to determine what and where they ate as they also were tracked with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars. Stable isotopes previously have been used to track sources of counterfeit currency, illicit drugs, explosives and bacteria like anthrax.
Among the elephants tracked in the study was a bull named Lewis, who ate lowland grasses in a sanctuary during rainy times, then trekked 25 miles to the mountains, where he ate shrubs and trees by day and raided farmers' corn fields at night. He was shot after the study was completed, possibly by a farmer.
"One big question is how can we secure a future for elephants when we know that the areas set aside for their protection are too small," says study co-author and zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder, president and chief executive officer of the Save the Elephants Foundation in Nairobi, Kenya.
Elephants are endangered internationally, but "their actual status varies from local abundance in parts of southern Africa and in some protected areas elsewhere, to critically endangered in vast regions of central Africa," says Douglas-Hamilton, who helped bring about a global ivory trade ban af
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2-Jan-2006