AsESG:  Promoting Conservation of Asian Elephants

About the AsESG

The last six months have seen the creation of five AsESG Task Forces and one Working Group: the Wild Elephant and Elephant Habitat Management Task Force (co-coordinators Arnold Sitompul and Christy Williams); the Human–elephant conflict (HEC) Task Force (coordinator Ravi Corea); the Illegal Killing and Trade Task Force (coordinator Vivek Menon); the Captive Elephant Management Task Force (co-coordinators S. Wijeyamohan and Heidi Riddle); the Veterinary Task Force (co-coordinators Jacob V. Cheeran and Susan Mikota); and the Database Working Group (coordinator Simon Hedges).

The last six-month period has also seen the AsESG sponsor several Asian Elephant specialists’ participation in a number of international fora. To this end we have provided travel grants for Mukti Roy to present his work on the “Use of habitat by Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in the Buxa Tiger Reserve and adjoining areas of northern west Bengal, north eastern India” at the Society for Conservation Biology’s Annual Meeting in South Africa in July 2007; as well as travel grants for Govindaraj Kannan to present his work on “Testing the efficacy of chilli-based repellents to deter crop damage by elephants in India” and N. Baskaran to present his work on the “Conservation of Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in southern India: a GIS analysis of the Anamalai elephant landscape” both at the International Elephant Research Symposium in Florida in November 2007.

From June 2007, new editions of Gajah, the AsESG’s journal, have been available in PDF format and can be downloaded from our website. We hope to make all the back issues available for download in the near future.  Gajah 27 now available.