Owing to landclearing and human expansion, Asian elephant Elephas maximus
Linnaeus, 1758 is declining throughout its range. In lowland Nepal, the
species now only occurs in small remnant populations, shared with India. In
order to develop guidelines for conserving the species in the country, we studied
the habitat use of a small and recently re-established population in Bardia
National Park. We used the distribution of dung in fixed width transects to
estimate seasonal habitat selection at a general scale of the Park. We also
analyzed a specific habitat selection by elephants within the sal-dominated
forest, by comparing the composition of trees and frequency of previous
elephant impact on them along fresh tracks with those at random points.
Elephants strongly preferred floodplain communities both during the cool and
the hot season, but there was a marked shift from forest to grass-dominated
subtypes between these seasons. Within the sal-dominated forest, there were
more trees with previous elephant impact and a higher density of important
food trees, especially Mallotus phillippinensis along fresh tracks than in
random points. We found little if any effect of human activity or location of
available water on the spatial distribution of elephant dung. The density of the
colonizing population was low (ca 0.2 animals/km2
), but numbers are expected
to increase in the future. With the preferred floodplain habitat being quite
small (ca 60 km2
), animals are then expected to spread outside the national
park. A large tract of government forest adjacent to the park may then, for
some time, provide needed space for the expanding population.