Assessment of wild Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) body condition by simple scoring method in a tropical deciduous forest of Western Ghats, Southern India.

Abstract

The individual based body condition assessment is the most meaningful method when applied as an early indicator of the impact of management actions and health status of wild elephants. The body condition evaluation of wild Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus) was studied within 107 km2 area covering deciduous forest of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, Western Ghats from February 2008 to December 2009. Overall vehicle drive of 3740 km yielded 1622 body condition assessments. A higher percentage of adult male and female were either in poor or medium condition during the dry season compared to the wet season. The proportion of adult female body condition was found to be poor compared to adult males. This might be due to less availability of nutritional food during the dry season and since elephant calving occurred throughout the year in Mudumalai, nutritional stress in lactating females could have resulted in their poor body condition. The aging factor could also be one of the reasons where either medium/poor condition was noticed mainly in adult elephants. It is suggested that long-term monitoring of body condition evaluation should be carried out not only in Asiatic elephant but even for several other wild ungulates.