MEME UPDATESISSUE 1 JULY-AUGUST 2011

BROKEN COLLAR - Castello, our first collared elephant, broke his GPS collar and stopped transmitting data.

COMPLETED FIELDWORK - Vanitha Ponnusamy, our star social scientist, completed the socioeconomic survey on human-elephant conflict.

NEW MEMBER AND FIELDHOUSE - Steven Lim joins MEME as our Field Project Manager. We also got our first field station.

MEME - the Management and Ecology of Malaysian Elephants - is gradually

taking off as a research project. In this Newsletter you will find regular updates on our progress in the field, news, and upcoming events.

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MEME stands for the Management and Ecology of Malaysian Elephants and is a

research project that commenced in Mar 2011 and aims to:

(1) assess and help to improve the effectiveness of elephant management in Peninsular Malaysia;

(2) develop a long-term management strategy based on scientific knowledge of elephant behavior

and ecology; and

(3) build capacity within Malaysian elephant managers and academic circles to produce a new

generation of wildlife researchers and managers of high scientific caliber.

MEME is a dynamic and synergistic program whose sustainability depends upon the long term

commitment of relevant government agencies, project members, and funding bodies. MEME core

partners are the Malaysian Department of Wildlife and National Parks (PERHILITAN),

the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC), and the Smithsonian

Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI, USA). We also have key partners at the University of

Malaya, James Cook University, and Copenhagen Zoo; and we are open to new additions to the team.

MEME is an expensive project. We are privileged to count with financial support from a number of

donors that include the Lab of Terrestrial Ecology of the National University of Singapore, Ah Meng

Memorial Fund (Singapore), Wildlife Reserves (Singapore), Copenhagen Zoo (Denmark), Friends of the

National Zoo (USA), USFWS Asian Elephant Conservation Fund (USA), and our favorite

philanthropists and elephant conservationists Ian Mellsop and Kay ‘Mama Gajah’ Arnold.

Soon we expect to close a long-term collaborations with an important Malaysian corporation. We

sincerely thank this support, without which MEME won’t be a reality.

MEME Updates is a bimonthly Newsletter that we will use to inform our friends and supporters

about the project’s news and activities. Stay tuned because things are

moving fast in MEME!

In Kuala Lumpur, 30 Aug 2011,

Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, PhDAssistant ProfessorSchool of GeographyUniversity of Nottingham Malaysia Campusahimsa@camposarceiz.comwww.camposarceiz.com

WHAT IS MEME?

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UPDATES JUL-AUG 2011

Tracking elephant movements is one of the central components of MEME. Together, PERHILITAN and

MEME have already collared three male elephants from the forests of northern Peninsular Malaysia.

Castello, is a young bull living in a highly fragmented landscape of Kalimantan. On Mar 26th he

became the first of our collared elephants. In the following ~ 3 months Castello stayed in a small

patch of forest, which he occasionally left to visit a nearby oil palm plantation. On Jun 19th, we

stopped receiving data from Castello’s collar and on Jul 6th we confirmed that the collar is broken

and won’t submit any more data. In Sep we will try to locate Castello in his patch of forest and

replace the broken collar for a new one, kindly provided by Africa Wildlife Tracking.

Cherang and Baung are our two other collared elephants. Both are translocated bulls. Cherang

has recently abandoned his previous ranging area in Tasik Kenyir and crossed the State border into

Kelantan. Baung is currently moving on the Eastern side of Tasik Kenyir, not far from some human

settlements.

Besides re-collaring Castello, in Sep-Oct we aim to deploy two more GPS-satellite collars donated

by Copenhagen Zoo.

NEWS FROM OUR COLLARED ELEPHANTS

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UPDATES JUL-AUG 2011

As Nasharuddin bin Othman — Director of the National Elephant Conservation Center — puts it,

managing elephants is about managing people. In order to mitigate human-elephant conflict (HEC) we

need to understand the ecology and behavior of both elephants and people.

As part of a collaborative project with the Elephant Conservation Group (ECG, a network of

elephant research and conservation projects across Asia) we are conducting questionnaires to

understand the perception and attitudes of Malaysian farmers towards elephants and HEC. After

preliminary field visits, we chose two areas for our surveys: Gua Musang (in Kelantan) and Kahan (in

Johor). The fieldwork was led by Ms Vanitha Ponnusamy, Assistant Professor at the Business

School of the University of Nottingham in Malaysia and MEME’s champion on

socioeconomic issues!

On Aug 20th, Vanitha and her team completed the collection of data in the field, making this the first

field project completed under MEME’s umbrella. Now it is time to analyze the data with our ECG

partners and understand the implications of our results for a more effective mitigation of HEC in

Malaysia and other Asian countries.

SOCIOECONOMIC SURVEY COMPLETED!

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UPDATES JUL-AUG 2011

New member - MEME is still a young and developing

project. In late Aug — months ahead of the original plan

— Steven Lim joined MEME as our Field Project

Manager. Steven served 18 years at the Malaysian

Armed Forces’ logistics and from Nov 2009 to May 2011

was the head of Belum-Temengor (Perak) Wildlife

Protection Unit, under the auspice of WWF-Malaysia.

Steven will be based in Terengganu and his first roles will

be to collect data on the wild fruits consumed by

elephants, take part in GPS-collaring operations, and

monitor the behavior of collared elephants. Steven will

also facilitate the work of the students and field assistants

expected to join MEME in the coming months. We are happy and excited to have Steven among us -

Welcome onboard Steven!

New field house - With the incorporation of Steven

as our first field-based member, we needed a place for

him to stay and operate from. As a temporary measure

we have rented a little wooden house in Kampung

Basung, Terengganu. Our hut is as simple as it looks like

(see photo) and is located less than one minute away

from the field station of our friends and partners from

Rimba.

WE ARE GROWING!

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UPDATES JUL-AUG 2011

Tracking Castello to assess the condition of his GPS-collar; Jul 6.

Because not all is about elephants - with Drs Bickford and Sheridan in Krau, Pahang; Aug 3.

Training Firmann Aldy’s team in Way Kambas, Sumatra, Indonesia; Aug 25.

Setting up MEME’s fieldhouse, Kg Basung, Terengganu; Aug 14.

HEC questionnaire survey in Kahan, Johor; Aug 13.

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UPDATES JUL-AUG 2011

Contact: ahimsa@camposarceiz.com

Just a little rain; Tasik Kenyir, Terengganu.

Wild mangosteen (Garcinia sp.) in Tasik Kenyir, Terengganu.

Ahem... behind you

Bufo asper

Mushrooms growing in elephant poo

Drinking from lianas. Way Kambas, Sumatra, Indonesia

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UPDATES JUL-AUG 2011

Contact: ahimsa@camposarceiz.com