Concordia University
M.Sc. candidate
Supervisor: Robert Weladji
Start: 2023-01-09
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Project

Impact of habitat loss on elephant movement and their interactions with humans around the Campo-Ma’an National Park, southern Cameroon
The 2019 declassification of 60,000 hectares of forest for their conversion into an oil palm plantation by CAMVERT brings a new threat to the critically endangered forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis around the Campo-Ma’an National Park (CMNP). As the creation of plantations can create attractive feeding spots for elephants, as well as lead them towards the nearby human village fields, such a major change in landscape is bound to exacerbate the human-elephant conflict by generating a new elephant distribution. Combining the local ecological knowledge and camera trap surveys, the research aims to better understand elephant habitat use and migratory corridors in response to habitat loss to develop appropriate mitigation measures and enable better human-elephant coexistence around the CMNP.

Keywords

Habitat use, Human-wildlife conflict, forest elephant