by Mike Loomis
June 14, 2010
We have searched intensely in the Mana Bridge (southern) region of Korup National Park but have had no luck in finding recent elephant sign. Right now, we have a reconnaisance crew searching near a road maintenance site where the workers say they saw elephants three days ago; the recon crew should be back in two hours or so.
If the recon crew finds any sign, we'll stay another two or three days and try to collar an elephant there. If they come back with no good news, we'll take down our camp and head back to Limbe. We are hearing that there is a lot of elephant sign on Mount Cameroon, so we'll go there right away and hopefully collar an animal quickly.
If we're successful on Mount Cameroon, we'll return to Korup but, this time, we'll focus on the northern end of the park. The northern end of the park has a lot of forest openings and natural salt licks, so there's a good chance that we can locate some elephants in what are normally high-traffic areas.
There's been a lot of rain over the last couple of days. Most of our hiking today was in a torrential downpour that lasted about 90 minutes. Our trail was essentially a stream about six inches deep!
We're trying to figure out why we aren't seeing any elephants this week when, last week, elephant activity in this area was pretty high. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the bush mangos are flowering right now and the elephants therefore have a lot of food sources to choose from. This amount of choice allows them to range pretty much wherever they want to, rather than in mango groves we've identified in the past as good collaring spots.
As I mentioned, we're waiting for the recon crew to return. Once we have an update from them, we'll decide if we're staying in Korup or moving on to Limbe and Mount Cameroon.
About the author:Dr. Mike Loomis is Chief Veterinarian at the North Carolina Zoological Park.
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