It’s been a while, but I come to you with a new and exciting update – that is entirely research centered for once!

I’ve more or less finished the first chapter of my PhD – an extensive literature review on elephants and drought, climate change, movement and adaptation. I really hate doing literature reviews, I see their value and importance but it is hard to feel like you’re making a difference and actually challenging yourself.

What I did realise came from my literature review was a very big bias towards where research took place. Having now done two in-depth literature reviews on African elephants, I was sensing a very strong lean towards research being done in Kruger National Park. I have many thoughts on KNP – not many of them good, and not a single one is good regarding their elephants. The more I read, the more my suspicion grew. As I finished up my review and sent it to my supervisor, I began work on a smaller paper on elephants and drought – a review paper.

Once this was finished, I moved on to my next paper – a highly ambitious GIS paper but my supporting supervisor is so busy that I didn’t want to bother him until semester break. So, I took it upon myself to review all my references (150). I painstakingly went through every reference and listed the author, topic, year, location and country. Then I did some simple statistics and got some fascinating (if not concerning results):

1. KNP theoretically has 98% of South Africa’s elephant population (which explains the bias towards it)
2. South Africa has 4% of the total elephant population (as of 2016 census data)
3. Research on elephants in South Africa makes up 38% of all elephant research

The implications for this are shocking. Botswana, followed by Kenya has the highest elephant population which means that the highest level of research should be done there. By all means, Botswana has better if not safer access to their elephant populations. It also means that 38% of research is being done on 4% of the population, so only a portion of that can be extrapolated to the rest of the population – but it is anyway. Beyond that, the elephants in Kruger are problematic at best. Overpopulated, trans-located, victims of generations of inter-generational trauma as a result of poor management. Young bulls struggle to form functioning relationships, herds are often disjointed and aggressive. The behaviour those elephants exhibit – charging, tipping cars, tusking people, killing each other is not normal. It is a result of disgusting mismanagement but they are being used as an example population for hundreds of thousands of others.

While it is obvious that SA has less issues with permissions and safety, the quality and importance of research happening in Eastern and other Southern countries is going under the radar when in fact – they should be making up a much bigger proportion. If anything, Botswanan research should be 38% of all published research.

While I’m not entirely sure what this means yet – I plan to investigate further. Do a randomised sample of the 15,000+ papers ever published (to remove my bias towards movement and drought) to find if this bias is a real problem to be faced. If it is – it could mean a big turn in the face of African elephant research and where it’s done (if I can get it published). But for now – food for thought. If this is happening for elephants – is it happening for other animals? Does African wildlife research need to be put under the microscope? Is it just Africa?

Who knows – time will tell. Stay tuned.