A 12-year study reveals that Udawalawe National Park's elephant communities have fragmented into isolated clusters as steady population loss, habitat degradation, and human-elephant conflict dismantle their social networks.
Researchers tracked 443 adult females from 2007 to 2018, finding that after 2012 the number of deaths and departures outpaced new arrivals; key individuals who acted as social glue disappeared, causing weak ties to dissolve and the once-cohesive fission-fusion groups to splinter. By 2018 roughly 69 percent of the original females were gone, and even the core residents altered their relationships within one to three years of the decline beginning.
The loss of grassland foraging areas has driven elephants away, while crop raids and alleged encounters with explosives have increased mortality; calves are failing to survive and many adults die in their 30s and 40s. Conservationists warn that without early detection-signaled by network flickering-the park may reach a point of no return, urging landscape-wide management that integrates farmland and infrastructure to allow humans and elephants to share space safely.
Yesterday, park officials announced a pilot crop-shielding program with nearby farmers, hoping to curb conflict and give the remaining elephants a better chance at recovery.