Tarangire Elephant Project

Annual Report: 2018

Protecting Elephants and Elephant Corridors in Tanzania

Charles and Lara Foley

Tarangire Elephant Project
Wildlife Conservation Society
PO Box 2703
Arusha, Tanzania
cfoley@wcs.org
Executive Summary
This year we have continued with our focus of protecting the key wildlife corridors in the greater
Tarangire ecosystem. Our work concentrated on establishing new Certificates of Customary Rights of
Occupancy (CCROs) in six villages: five in the northern corridor linking Tarangire National Park with
Lake Natron on the Kenya border, and one (the Makuyuni elephant corridor) to the northeast of
Tarangire, which is the main dispersal area for our study population. CCROs allow communities to set
aside land for certain land use purposes only, in this case, as rangelands for pastoralism, which is
compatible with wildlife use. With our local partners we have made good progress in developing land use
plans in five villages, in preparation for setting up full CCROs next year. In the sixth village, Makuyuni,
the CCRO development process was held up by the discovery that a local company held title deeds to part
of the land that was to be established as a CCRO. We have been engaging both with the community and
the District to try to resolve the situation in favor of the community.

We conducted intensive wildlife and rangeland monitoring studies across the Tarangire-Natron
ecosystem, including two wildlife ground counts (part of a series of five ground counts conducted in the
past two years), the first camera trap survey of Makame Wildlife Management Area (WMA), and set up a
rangeland regeneration experiment with nine, four-acre experimental enclosures across three sites. We
also completed a report on carnivore distribution and abundance across the greater ecosystem.

Our village game scouts continue to carry out anti-poaching patrols in the wildlife dispersal area of
Simanjiro; their monitoring and anti-poaching coverage performance has steadily improved, as measured
by SMART software, and they are now meeting close to 100% of their time and distance coverage
targets.

In central Tanzania, we have been working with

the District authorities in the Ruaha-Katavi area to
come up with mechanisms to protect the two main
wildlife migration corridors in the ecosystem. The
District Commissioner expressed a strong interest
in the idea of protecting the corridors, but
unfortunately she was recently replaced, so we are
now in the process of rebuilding the connection
with the new administration.

The Tarangire elephants continue to thrive; there

is still virtually no poaching in the population,
which continues to expand. This year there were
55 births to date, although this is likely to increase
once any December births are added to the total.
Mortality levels are around 1% per annum, and
the population continues to age, with more and
Map of Tanzania and our areas of geographic focus: the
Tarangire ecosystem in the north and Ruaha–Katavi
more females entering the 55+ age cohort.
ecosystem in central Tanzania.

Tarangire Elephant Project 1 Annual Report: 2018

Project Activities

1. Protecting vital elephant corridors and dispersal areas in the Tarangire ecosystem

The Tarangire ecosystem in northern Tanzania covers an area of over 9,500 square miles, ranging from
the Maasai Steppe in the south to Lake Natron, on the border with Kenya, in the north (see Figure 1). The
majority of Tarangire National Park’s wildlife is migratory - each year approximately 40,000 animals
migrate out of Tarangire National Park (NP) onto neighbouring community lands to the north and east in
the wet season, and returning to Tarangire NP when ephemeral water disappears in these dispersal areas.
This movement is driven by differences in mineral concentrations across the ecosystem; phosphorus
levels in the soil in Tarangire NP are below the minimum requirements for lactating females of large
ungulates, forcing them to leave the Park. This represents the third-largest movement of ungulates in
Africa, exceeded only by the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti and the White-eared kob movement in
South Sudan. Elephants and other wildlife migrate out of Tarangire NP annually, moving to mineral-rich
dispersal areas to the east (Simanjiro) and to the north (Lake Natron) in the wet season.

This large-scale movement of wildlife is increasingly

threatened from land use change outside Tarangire
NP. Agricultural expansion, particularly to the west
and north of Tarangire, has led to the disappearance of
five of the nine major wildlife corridors connecting
Tarangire to surrounding dispersal areas in the past 40
years. The land to the east and south is predominately
Maasai-land, and pastoral Maasai have traditionally
tolerated and co-existed with wildlife on their land.
However, recent changes in their land use and pastoral
traditions have led to an expansion of agriculture or to
the leasing of communal grazing land to immigrant
farmers. This expansion now threatens the integrity of
two of the most important remaining corridors. These
are the northern corridor, linking Tarangire NP to
Lake Natron through Manyara Ranch (corridor ‘a’,
Figure 1), and the eastern corridor encompassing the
Simanjiro plains (corridor ‘b’, Figure 1).

Protecting these migration corridors and dispersal

Figure 1. The three key wildlife corridors in the
Tarangire ecosystem that are the focus of our
conservation efforts: Lake Natron to the north
(corridor ‘a’), Simanjiro plains (corridor ‘b’), and
Makuyuni elephant dispersal area (corridor ‘c’).
areas is essential to maintaining the ecological
integrity of the ecosystem because their loss would
lead to drastic declines in the ecosystem’s wildlife. In
the year 2000, we began to expand our focus from our
elephant studies inside the Park to protecting critical
wildlife migration corridors in the ecosystem. In 2005,
we helped establish the first Conservation Easement in
the Simanjiro Plains (see corridor ‘b’, Figure 1) by

Tarangire Elephant Project 2 Annual Report: 2018

working with local community and business partners to zone an area exclusively for livestock grazing and
wildlife. It was a win-win for wildlife and the pastoral community, who were eager to protect their dry
season grazing land from agricultural expansion. However, conservation easements have no legal
standing in Tanzanian law, so in 2014 we started adopting Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy
(CCROs) to further our land protection efforts.

A Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO) is a legal document, provisioned for under the
Tanzania land law, which formalizes land ownership. CCROs have traditionally been used by individuals
to secure rights to their land, although the law also allows their use by groups of people or entire
communities. A CCRO allows a community to obtain a land lease for an identified area and create by-
laws that allocate specific land uses for the area. This effectively prevents communally-owned land from
being sold to private individuals, as any changes to CCRO land requires the consent of the entire
community through a vote at a village general assembly meeting. CCROs have proven to be very popular
in the communities where we have been working, and our goal is to develop a network of CCROs that
link Tarangire National Park with all of the major wildlife dispersal areas.

This year, working with our partners, the Ujamaa Community Resource Trust (UCRT), we focused our
land protection efforts in two corridors: (1) the northern corridor to Lake Natron, close to the Kenyan
border (corridor ‘a’, Figure 1), and (2) the Makuyuni Elephant Dispersal Area (corridor ‘c’, Figure 1),
which is a critical area for our study elephants in the northern sub-population.

In the northern corridor, we have

concentrated our efforts on establishing
CCROs in five villages in the corridor
linking Tarangire National Park with Lake
Natron (see hatched area, Figure 2). We
have already made good progress on
securing CCROs in the southern part of
the route, and we are now concentrating
our efforts in the northern section.
Unfortunately this vision has been
complicated by the allocation of a large
patch of land as a concession for a soda
ash factory (Lake Natron is an important
soda lake). However, we are working to
protect the land all around this concession,
and, if poaching and disturbance can be
controlled once the factory is in place, we
anticipate that the migration should be
able to continue.

Figure 2. Map showing current CCROs and area of focus for

establishing new CCROs in the northern Tarangire corridor. The
five villages where we are currently working are all within the red
hatched ‘area of focus’.

Tarangire Elephant Project 3 Annual Report: 2018

The work this year has focussed on producing Land Use Plans (LUPs) for these villages, which have to be
completed before steps can be initiated to implement a CCRO. Developing LUPs is a protracted process,
with many steps and many local and national authorities involved. Thus far the communities have
completed the zoning of the LUPs, and the next step will involve developing the LUP bylaws, obtaining
the Certificate of Village Land, and finally developing the CCROs. However, a crucial element of this
LUP development process was ensuring that contiguous areas across villages were internally allocated as
grazing land, as these will almost certainly become the future CCROs. This has mostly been achieved.
Oldonyo Lengai village will be of particular conservation importance, as it is a huge village with vast
areas of potential grazing land, and this is where a large proportion of ungulates from the Tarangire
ecosystem go to calve during the wet season. We will continue to work in these villages this year, and
will hopefully have succeeded in establishing CCROs in most of them by the end of 2019.

The other key area of focus this year was the Makuyuni elephant dispersal area (see Figure 3). This area,
to the northeast of Tarangire National Park, forms the core wet season dispersal area for the northern sub-
population of elephants that we have been studying for the past 25 years. The elephants migrate to this
area when the long rains begin in February-March and return to the Park at the end of the rainy season in
May–June. The community that owns the land is predominantly Maasai, and this area has traditionally
formed their dry season grazing land for their cattle, sheep and goats. However, there has been
considerable agricultural expansion in this village in the past five years, and we want to ensure that the
area is safeguarded from cultivation, which would render it useless for both wildlife and pastoralism.

Figure 3. Map showing proposed CCRO in Makuyuni village.

We initially made good progress with Makuyuni village to set up a CCRO (see Figure 3). Crucially, the
idea was enthusiastically endorsed by the general community and also supported by the District Land
Commission. During the boundary demarcation process, one farm (of approximately 100 acres) was
identified as being illegally within the proposed CCRO area, and it was decided that the farm had to move

Tarangire Elephant Project 4 Annual Report: 2018

and the boundaries of the CCRO were approved at a General Assembly meeting. The new CCRO area
covers approximately 8,900 acres, and includes all of the core elephant dispersal area. However, when the
boundaries of the CCRO were taken to the District for registration, we ran into a potentially serious
problem, when a prominent company came forward to say that they owned land (with title deeds) within
the proposed CCRO area, encompassing approximately 20% of the proposed CCRO. This came as a big
surprise to the community who knew nothing about this deal. We are working with the District to resolve
this issue and expect to have an update and proposed solution sometime next year. Fortunately, once this
dispute is resolved, the CCRO finalization can be fast-tracked; the District has endorsed the by-laws for
the area and beacons have already been put in place around the proposed CCRO area.

2. Monitoring rangeland health and wildlife trends in the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem

This year we produced several reports detailing trends in wildlife populations across the greater
Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem. These included a summary of vehicle-based ground counts of all large
mammals, a spoor-based study of carnivore density and distribution, and a camera trap survey of Makame
Wildlife Management Area. In addition, we also carried out an assessment of rangeland regeneration
under different management scenarios. This work was carried out to provide an assessment of the status
of wildlife populations across the ecosystem, and determine how effective our conservation strategies
have been.

2.1 Ecosystem-wide ground counts of wildlife

We conducted five wildlife ground counts across the entire Tarangire-West Kilimanjaro ecosystem since
2016, one each wet and dry season since June 2016, and covering an area of approximately 1,500
kilometers of road and tracks. We counted all animals seen and estimating their distance to the center of
the road, and then calculated density estimates for our six target species in the ecosystem (elephant,
wildebeest, zebra, impala, Grant’s gazelle and giraffe) using DISTANCE, and plotted their distribution
(Figure 4, below). The counts showed that numbers of giraffe, zebra and elephants all exhibited
increasing (though non-significant) trend lines, Grant’s gazelle and wildebeest figures were stable, while
impala numbers increased significantly between the 2016 wet season and 2017 and 2018 counts.

Tarangire Elephant Project 5 Annual Report: 2018

 (a) (b)

Figure 4. Maps showing concentration of wildlife in the greater Tarangire ecosystem in: (a) the dry season of 2017
and (b) the wet season of 2018. The two maps highlight the dispersal of wildlife onto community lands in the wet
season.

Spoor survey of carnivore density

In addition to surveying the large ungulates in the ecosystem, our aim was also to assess the density and
distribution of some of the larger carnivores. Because many carnivores are nocturnal, or actively avoid
humans when on community lands, they cannot be counted with sight-based surveys and different
techniques need to be used. We used spoor (footprints) as a proxy for carnivore sightings. Our team drove
along roads or tracks very early in the morning before other vehicles or cattle herders were out to look for
spoor along the tracks. To do this, we hired Hadza hunter-gatherers, who are some of the best trackers in
Africa to assist us. The two trackers would sit on specially-made front seats (see Figure 5) and would look
for spoor signs as the vehicle drove along slowly. They could easily distinguish whether a set of tracks
were made by the same individual (for instance if a hyeana had been walking on the road, took a
diversion and then returned to the road), and they could spot even faint tracks that most people would
have missed. We focused our work on six large carnivore species: lion, leopard, cheetah, wild dog,
Striped hyaena and Spotted hyaena, which we surveyed at six different locations across the ecosystem
(some inside the National Park and some on community land).

The most common large carnivore species was the Spotted hyaena, followed by the Striped hyaena and
Leopard, all of which were recorded at all six surveyed locations. We only recorded lions at two sites

Tarangire Elephant Project 6 Annual Report: 2018

(with the main stronghold being Tarangire National Park), and we found very few signs of cheetah and
wild dog, with the latter recorded only once, in Tarangire National Park. Not surprisingly, the distribution
of both lion and leopard was negatively correlated with distance to Maasai bomas, suggesting these
species were actively avoiding human presence. The final report is available on request.

Figure 5. The field team during the carnivore spoor count survey. The Hadza trackers sat in the front of the vehicle
during the slow-speed road transects.

2.2 Camera trap survey in Makame Wildlife Management Areas

In December 2017 we completed the first-ever camera trap survey of Makame Wildlife Management
Area (WMA), a large, community protected area to the south of Tarangire National Park (see Figure 6,
below). The survey focused on an area of approximately 650 km2 of dense Acacia-Commiphora thicket in
the north of the WMA, which had been identified by our partners, Carbon Tanzania, as a region of high
biological interest. A total of 2,500 large mammals of 42 different species were recorded in 3,041 camera
trap nights, giving a camera trap rate of 0.82. This trap rate is surprisingly higher than the rates recorded
using similar methods and equipment in both Tarangire National Park and Maswa Game Reserve (which
is adjacent to the Serengeti National Park).

A total of 20 carnivore species were recorded, including African wild dogs, leopard, and caracal. We also
recorded very high numbers of Aardwolf, a small hyaeanid that feeds on termites. Abundance figures for
this species in Makame were almost 50x higher than we had recorded in other parts of the ecosystem,
which is probably linked to the greater availability of termite species, which form its main prey,
particularly Trinervitermis bettonianus.

The survey also discovered two new species for the WMA, the Natal Red Duiker and Bushy-tailed
Mongoose. Surprisingly, the Fringe-eared Oryx, an ungulate with large, rapier-like horns, was found to be

Tarangire Elephant Project 7 Annual Report: 2018


Figure 6: Map showing the location of Makame Wildlife
Management Area and the camera trap survey area, in
relation to Tarangire National Park.
Tarangire Elephant Project
relatively abundant in the survey area (Figure
7). This species is at the southern end of its
global range in the Tarangire ecosystem, and
numbers have declined over the past 20 years
due to over-hunting. The species has been
recorded relatively frequently in the open
grasslands in central Makame, and this survey
showed that it is also common in the bushland
part of the WMA, and that Makame WMA
might form a more important stronghold for the
Fringe-eared Oryx than previously thought.
This survey suggests that Makame WMA
provides important habitat for multiple species
of threatened mammals and hence is a very
important area for large mammal conservation
in the Tarangire ecosystem. Unfortunately we
also found evidence of large-scale poaching for
bushmeat in the WMA, and obtained several
photos of poachers on motorbikes. As a result
of the survey, Tarangire National Park carried
out an anti-poaching operation in the WMA,
which captured several poachers, an one of our
partners, the Honeyguide Foundation, are now
planning to initiate longer term anti-poaching
operations in the WMA. The final report is
available on request.
Figure 7: Camera trap photo of a
Fringe-eared oryx. The species was
found to be surprisingly common in the
Makame WMA, which is now thought
to be a stronghold for the species.
8 Annual Report: 2018
Figure 8. A caracal caught on a camera trap during our survey of the Makame WMA.

2.3 Improving wildlife habitat and pastoral grazing through rangeland regeneration
The majority of people living in the eastern and northern parts of the Tarangire ecosystem are pastoralists,
and access to healthy rangelands is therefore crucial to their livelihoods. These rangelands, in turn, also
support wildlife dispersing from Tarangire National Park during the wet season. Unfortunately, many of
the traditional systems of livestock rotation, which were developed during times when there were far
fewer cattle in the ecosystem, are no longer being implemented, resulting in almost ubiquitous over-
grazing across most of the ecosystem.

We initiated this research, in collaboration with the University of York (England), to better understand the
impact that over-grazing was having in the ecosystem and to find ways of combatting its effects. In order
to do this we will set up a total of twelve 4-acre enclosures in different habitat types: six in thick bushland
and six in degraded grassland. Each of the enclosures will be subjected to different management practices:
light grazing, heavy grazing, burning, and cutting, with enough replicates to ensure statistical robustness
for the analysis. This year we constructed nine of the twelve enclosures: six in dense Dichrostachys
bushland in Randilen Wildlife Management Area (WMA), and three in degraded grassland in the
Simanjiro (Figure 9). A further degraded grassland site has been identified in Randilen WMA.

The plan is to work closely with the village grazing committees at all stages so that they can directly
observe the impact and results of the different management strategies. Thus far the enclosures have
elicited a great deal of interest from the communities, particularly in the Simanjiro, where grass species
previously not seen by younger pastoralists are growing in the enclosures – leading to impromptu
gatherings at the enclosures by the local herders.

Tarangire Elephant Project 9 Annual Report: 2018

Figure 9. Fenced enclosure in degraded grassland habitat for the rangeland regeneration experiment.

3. Supporting anti-poaching on community lands in the Tarangire ecosystem

For the past ten years we have been supporting eight Village Game Scouts (VGS) operating in two
villages in the Simanjiro: Terrat and Sukuro. These scouts act as our ‘eyes and ears’, roving across the
plains on motorbikes or bicycles and noting any signs of illegal activity, such as poaching, charcoal
production, or illegal farming or settlements in the conservation easement areas. Two years ago we started
training them to use the SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) law enforcement monitoring
system. SMART is open-source software that was developed by a consortium of conservation
organizations and has been used extensively in Africa and Asia. The tool allows a scout’s patrol and
observations to be logged, mapped, and analyzed. The scouts are provided with rugged smartphones with
the Cybertracker app, which they use to collect patrol data, wildlife observations, and any signs of illegal
activity incidents. All of their activities, including their regular anti-poaching patrols, and monthly
wildlife surveys are recorded in this manner.

Using SMART, the VGS have been steadily increasing their monitoring performance – from April 2016
to March 2017 they were achieving approximately 70% of their distance and hours worked targets, while
from April 2017 to March 2018 this increased to 98% (Figure 10), and it has remained at this level since
then. The Terrat VGS in the past year covered 5,700 kilometers on patrol, and Sukuro VGS have achieved
4,800 kilometers. Poaching for bushmeat has been quite low in the area for the past two years, although
we are continuing to strengthen our network of collaborations with other anti-poaching units in the area
and with government agencies to ensure that we can respond rapidly to any future threats on the ground.

Tarangire Elephant Project 10 Annual Report: 2018

 Improvements in targets achieved shown by VGS over time
120%
Set targets achieved

100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%

Months

Figure 10. Increase in number of patrol targets (distance and time) achieved by VGS after the adoption of using
SMART conservation monitoring software in April 2016.

4. Protecting the main elephant corridor linking the Ruaha and Katavi ecosystems.

In 2014 we initiated a detailed study to identify the main elephant corridors linking Ruaha National Park
with the Katavi National Park in the central part of the country. This area is important for three main
reasons:
a) The two ecosystems are home to over 25,000 elephants, making the area globally important for
elephant conservation.
b) The area is the last remaining region of connectivity between the elephant populations in central
and western Tanzania.
c) The land is still relatively ‘wild’ and intact, with a low human density and little infrastructure,
providing an excellent opportunity to develop a wildlife corridor before human encroachment
becomes a prohibiting factor.
With our WCS field office in Ruaha, we spent several years surveying the area to understand where the
main migration corridors were and what was the land use or protection status. With the work of our PhD
student, Dr. Alex Lobora, we used a combination of elephant radio-collaring data, dung surveys,
interviews with local communities, and satellite analysis of the area. This research revealed two major
corridors in this area: one linking Ruaha and Katavi national parks through government Open Areas and
Game Reserves (‘corridor II,’ Figure 11), and another leading northwards from Rungwa Game Reserve
through the Itulu Forest Reserve (‘corridor I’, Figure 11), which the Forestry Department is hoping to
upgrade to a Nature Reserve. The more northern of the two corridors (corridor I) is shorter and appears to
be less threatened by agricultural expansion.

Tarangire Elephant Project 11 Annual Report: 2018

Figure 11. Map of the Ruaha-Katavi ecosystem, showing two potential elephant corridors linking the two national
parks.

In mid-April 2018 we held a meeting in Chunya District with the District Commissioner (DC) and her
team and the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) to inform them about the corridor, the work
that has been completed thus far, and to discuss how best to protect the area. The main challenge is the
rapid incursion of people into the Piti Open Area (see Figure 11, above), which began after the sport
hunting investor stopped operating in the area. The District is currently working to control this as much as
possible. The meeting was very productive, with the DC expressing her support for protecting a corridor,
although unfortunately the DC was transferred in early June, which subsequently slowed down the
process. We are now working with the District to draw up plans to use local Village and District land laws
to zone and protect the area for wildlife compatible land uses only, possibly with some form of annual
compensation to the key villages. Assuming these plans gain traction, we hope to start rolling them out
early in 2019.

Tarangire Elephant Project 12 Annual Report: 2018

5. Continuing our 25-year elephant research program in Tarangire

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Tarangire Elephant Project, making this the second-longest
elephant study in Africa. The Tarangire elephants continue to thrive and 2018 was another good year for
them. Thus far this year we have recorded 55 new births in the northern sub-population that forms the
focus of our study, although that figure is likely to rise slightly when December births are included.
During the first 10 years of the study, the Tarangire population saw a spike in births every three years,
which coincided with the average inter-birth interval for the population. However, these spikes are now
less obvious, as there is now less synchrony in birthing periods for females in the population. There was a
birth peak in 2015 (75 births) and another peak in 2017 (94 animals), so this year there were fewer
females available to give birth, accounting for the reduced figures.

Mortality levels also continue to

be extremely low in this
population. Tarangire is one of
the few elephant populations in
Africa that has experienced
virtually no poaching in the past
decade, so all recorded mortality
is the result of natural causes.
This year the mortality rate was
1%, which is in keeping with the
annual average for the past 14
years. Typically, un-poached
elephant populations experience
mortality levels of between 1-4%,
so clearly Tarangire is at the very
low end of the mortality
spectrum. This is probably
A curious male elephant approaches our field vehicle.
because a) the animals still have
access to wet season dispersal areas outside the Park, which helps reduce competition for resources, so the
animals are all generally in good condition, and b) while the population is maturing and is now
experiencing some deaths from old age, the bulk of the adult population has yet to reach that stage. As the
population continues to age, we expect an uptick in age-related mortality and therefore overall mortality
levels to increase.

With the steady population growth rate witnessed in Tarangire over the past 25 years, it is not surprising
that the mean family group size has now increased concomitantly, from 8.3 individuals per group in 1994
to 36 in 2018. Indeed, Tarangire now has several ‘super-groups’ of 60-plus individuals in the Park. These
groups will travel together during the wet season, when resources are abundant and little potential for
intra-group competition. However, during the dry season, when elephants feed mostly on discrete
vegetation sources, such as bushes or fruit, most of the groups tend to split into smaller ‘bond groups’.
Whether these bond groups will eventually split permanently into different groups is yet to be determined.
In the wet season, when resources allow, the northern sub-population of elephants still sometimes gather

Tarangire Elephant Project 13 Annual Report: 2018

in large breeding groups of 600-plus individuals, providing one of the iconic sights of Tarangire National
Park.

The change in the demographic structure of the Tarangire elephant population over the past 24 years is
shown in Figure 12. In 1994 there was a big gap in the number of elephants between the ages of 5 and 20,
with only 23% of elephants in this age bracket, compared to 48% in 2018. This gap was the result of
poaching pressure in the 1980s, which suppressed reproduction during those years and resulted in very
few elephants within this cohort. In 1994 fully 41% of the population was comprised of infants under the
age of five, suggesting that the population had started to recover significantly in the early 1990s following
the trade ban on ivory imposed by CITES in 1989. In 1994 the majority of adult females were relatively
young, falling mostly within the 20-30 year age range. This was the result of targeted poaching of older
individuals, which have bigger ivory and offer a more lucrative target to ivory poachers. By contrast, the
age structure of the 2018 population is much more evenly spaced, with roughly even numbers of animals
in all ages from 1-10 years old (Figure 12). Only 23% of the population is now under five years old, while
there are many more elephants in the 5-20 year age bracket. This indicates that there has been steady
growth in the elephant population with little or no interruptions over the past two decades.

The other big difference is in the adult population, where there has been a transition of females into the
oldest age cohort. In 1994 there were only a couple of individuals in the 45-60 year cohort, and no
females aged over 55 (Figure 12). By contract, in 2018, 4% of the population is in the 45-60 year cohort
and there are now 16 females over the age of 55 and five that are 60 years or older. The steady maturing
of the Tarangire elephant population has been a key feature of the study since it began, and Tarangire now
represents a model of what a ‘normal’ or ‘un-poached’ elephant population should look like across
savannah areas in Africa.

18%
16%
14%
% of population

12%
10%
8%
1994
6%
2018
4%
2%
0%
10

11-14

15-19

20-24

25-29

30-44

45-65
2

9
<1

Age category

Figure 12. Population structure of the northern elephant sub-population in Tarangire National Park (excluding males
over 10 years old), comparing 1994 and 2018. The graph illustrates an aging population that is normal for unpoached
populations.

Tarangire Elephant Project 14 Annual Report: 2018