A Phased Approach to Increase Human Tolerance in Elephant Corridors to Link Protected Areas in Southern Mozambique

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments on the manuscript “Implementing an initial three phased approach to increase human tolerance in elephant corridors linking protected areas”

This topic is very interesting. The authors used long-term monitoring data to analyze the optimized elephant corridors where there were few human-elephant conflicts. The scope of this manuscript was different from the previous investigation which mostly focused on habitat modelling. The data was sufficient to support the analysis, however, some major issues remain to be addressed before the manuscript to be accepted for publication.

General Comments:

1. The authors pointed out that there was about 10% occurrence data outside of the protected areas. Wall et al. (2021) have argued that almost 62% of the African land could be the home of elephant, and most of the potential habitat was outside the PAs. This meant that human could occupy a large area of potential habitats of African elephant which resulted in unavoidable conflicts between human and elephants. Are there safe corridors for elephant movement from one habitat to another？

2. The species distribution modelling has been the prevailing tool for mapping the suitable habitat. The modelling results significantly depended on the observing data. If there was no enough observing data, the modelling results would have some agreements with the reality (eg. Yang et al., 2022). I want to know if there was any difference between the observed extent from the elephant occurrence data and the modelling habitat range (eg. Wall et al. 2021).

3. Several analytical tools have been used to delineate the animal corridors. The authors have tried to compare the observed corridors and the modelling corridors derived from the corridor tools?

4. The writing of the manuscript was redundant. There was too much description about the study sites and experiments. A clear and summary introduction about the study sites and experiments would be desired.

5. More unpalatable plants for elephants and palatable plants for human could lead to the condition in which there was no much food for elephant in this type of corridor. I don’t know this corridor would be safe for elephant movement especially over a long distance.

Specific comments:

1. In section 2.1, the phrase “Satellite tracking Elephants” meant that the elephant was traced by using GPS? I think the authors can make this section clearer.

 

References:

1. Wall et al., 2021. Human footprint and protected areas shape elephant range across Africa. Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.042.

2. Yang W, Ma Y, Jing L, Wang S, Sun Z, Tang Y, Li H. Differential Impacts of Climatic and Land Use Changes on Habitat Suitability and Protected Area Adequacy across the Asian Elephant’s Range. Sustainability. 2022; 14(9):4933. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14094933.

Author Response

General Comments:

1. The authors pointed out that there was about 10% occurrence data outside of the protected areas. Wall et al. (2021) have argued that almost 62% of the African land could be the home of elephant, and most of the potential habitat was outside the PAs. This meant that human could occupy a large area of potential habitats of African elephant which resulted in unavoidable conflicts between human and elephants. Are there safe corridors for elephant movement from one habitat to another？

A follow up manuscript focusing on comparing observed and modelled data will provide more insight into defining corridors which connect protected areas in southern Mozambique. With regards to the reviewer’s comments on the safety of these existing corridors, our manuscript focuses on a corridor region which collared elephants are using between South Africa’s KNP and Tembe Elephant Park, as well as and Mozambique’s Maputo Special Reserve. Most of our initial data collection happened in Pas, resulting in the unbalanced ratio to which the reviewer describes. This ratio would be different if more elephants had been collared outside of the Pas. The safety of this corridor will be determined by how successful the various proposed methods are to promote harmonious human-elephant co-existence. The low occurrence of data points in our tracking data found outside of protected areas indicates that they view the protected areas as safe zones in comparison to the corridor. This is explained in the Discussion “Although our elephant tracking history revealed only 9.5% of data recordings have occurred outside of PAs, this can be explained by a long initial history of recording elephant movements within fortified PAs within South Africa. When considering only the PAs in neighbouring Mozambique, we found that 28% of movements were outside of PAs, which was closer to the findings of Wall et. al. (2021) where more than half of elephant movements over largely unfenced PAs across Africa were outside of PAs”.

2. The species distribution modelling has been the prevailing tool for mapping the suitable habitat. The modelling results significantly depended on the observing data. If there was not enough observing data, the modelling results would have some agreements with the reality (eg. Yang et al., 2022). I want to know if there was any difference between the observed extent from the elephant occurrence data and the modelling habitat range (eg. Wall et al. 2021).

Thank you for the comment. We do value the importance of modelling occurrence versus expected data. Species distribution modelling is beyond the scope of this manuscript. It is, however, being carried out in a follow up paper as a part of one of the PhD of one of the co-authors (Bedetti et al. unpublished). We have thus added to the text: “The next step will be to model the occurrence of elephant locations versus suitable habitat (see Young et al. 2022). This is being carried out in a follow up study (Bedetti et al. unpublished).” We would like to bring attention to the first objective of our study - “Firstly, we discuss the use of satellite tracking of elephants to identify corridors linking PAs.” Our study focused on using elephant satellite data to identify potential corridors, after which we focus on alternative crops and direct methods to reduce human-elephant conflict.

3. Several analytical tools have been used to delineate the animal corridors. The authors have tried to compare the observed corridors and the modelling corridors derived from the corridor tools?

Thank you for the comment. No, we have not tried to compare observed corridors and modelled corridors. We refer to our explanation in the previous comment that this was beyond the scope of this first manuscript but is being carried out in a follow up manuscript in as a part of the PhD of one of the co-authors.

4. The writing of the manuscript was redundant. There was too much description about the study sites and experiments. A clear and summary introduction about the study sites and experiments would be desired.

We have synthesised the highlighted sections. We have however, left behind the motivation as to why the various collaring operations took place.

5. More unpalatable plants for elephants and palatable plants for human could lead to the condition in which there was no much food for elephant in this type of corridor. I don’t know this corridor would be safe for elephant movement especially over a long distance.

In our manuscript we discuss the various phases to delineate corridors. The movement data has identified several potential corridors while the RRU’s reports substantiate the movement of elephants between PAs. Historically humans are often displaced out of PAs and forced to live on marginal land and in the process subjected to further crop-raids from corridor moving elephants. Not considering the sosio-ecological aspects of corridors could easily result in retaliation killings. Human safety is thus an important strategic objective to ensure the long-term feasibility of any corridor design.

The elephants are not prone to linger in the corridors and actively use them at night and at faster speeds. The strategy is therefore not to provide food for elephants along their passageway but to ensure their safety and those of people in these regions. It is also important to have sufficient vegetation cover (to minimise deforestation) to ensure that there are safety nets for the elephants to hide out during the day. The current natural vegetation cover is sufficient to afford the elephants the safety that they need by day, while at night it allows them to feed lightly albeit while moving rapidly along the length of the corridor. We can see from our tracking data that the diurnal hiding behaviour does not involve movements typical of feeding behaviour. This will all form part of the subsequent publication by Bedetti et al. but was not the theme of this manuscript. As the elephants know when to move and at what speeds, with their main objective being to reach the next safe area by daybreak, we believe that encouraging (not displacing) people to continue with their subsistence farming practice while diversifying their income (markets for honey and elephant unpalatable crops) would diminish conflict and ensure long term coexistence strategies. Another important reason for the publication of the manuscript is to flag the importance of the corridors and by so doing present a call to action to ensure strategic landuse planning that will be compatible with favourable conservation outcomes. As mentioned, detail modelling of elephant movements and corridor mapping is happening in conjunction with the implementation of practical phases presented in the manuscript.

Specific comments:

1. In section 2.1, the phrase “Satellite tracking Elephants” meant that the elephant was traced by using GPS? I think the authors can make this section clearer.

Thank you for pointing this out. The elephants had satellite collars which give off GPS location points at specified times. We will make this clearer in the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is well written and recommend to accept as it is. Here is minor comments :

-Title is not reflecting your study, so please change the title :

=> ‘initial three phased approach’is not clearly addressed and the meaning is not inappropriate in the title

-Please check the citation format of MDPI

-line 95-97 also mentioning the first three phases and this also needs to change  

 

Author Response

The manuscript is well written and recommend to accept as it is. Here is minor comments :

-Title is not reflecting your study, so please change the title :

=> ‘initial three phased approach’is not clearly addressed and the meaning is not inappropriate in the title

Thank you, the title has been amended to: A phased approach to increase human tolerance in elephant corridors to link protected areas in southern Mozambique.

-Please check the citation format of MDPI This has been edited accordingly.

-line 95-97 also mentioning the first three phases and this also needs to change

Therefore, to contribute towards the ecological processes that propagate the coexistence of elephants, their habitat, and people, we present a phased approach of a long-term strategy developed for southern Mozambique, aimed at promoting coexistence between people and elephants while ensuring that landscape connectivity is maintained.  

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the authors responded to the review comments well. I recommend this manuscript to be accepted in its current form.