Photo: Safari Park Dvůr Králové
Zoologists from the Dvůr Králové Safari Park have started researching elephants in the Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania. One of the zoo’s main missions is protecting endangered and threatened wildlife species directly in their natural habitats, and this is precisely the aim of their research in Tanzania. Millions of elephants once lived throughout Africa, but today, they only number around 350,000. Ivory poachers kill eight percent of the elephant population every year, but as Michal Šťastný from the Department of Communication and International Projects at Safari Park Dvůr Králové told me, it is not only poaching that threatens the African elephants.
The Dvůr Králové Safari Park has been collaborating with Tanzania’s Mkomazi Park for over 15 years. Why do you collaborate with this park and why is the collaboration important?
“We have always worked closely with our partners in Africa and Mkomazi is an important partner for many reasons. First of all, Tony Fitzjohn, one of the most influential African wildlife conservationists, worked there in the past, and our Safari Park brought four black rhinos there, that now live there and have had offspring and even grandchildren.
“Since 2009, our project has been running there in quite an extensive way, equipping elephants and other animals with telemetric collars that track their movements, what they do and how they do it. Because if you can track what animals do, you can prevent human-wildlife conflicts, which are one of the main threats for African wildlife right now and have been for quite a long time.”
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Author: Anna Fodor