The Asian Elephant: Ecology and Management

Cambridge Studies in Applied Ecology and Resource Management

by Raman Sukumar, M.S. Swaminathan (Foreword by)

The Asian elephant has had a unique cultural association with people. Unfortunately, elephants and people have also been in conflict, resulting in the decline in elephants throughout their former range in Southern Asia. This book provides an ecological analysis of elephant human interaction and its implications for the conservation of elephants. The foraging habits of elephants and their impact on vegetation are considered, along with the interactions that occur between elephants and humans. The ecological data provide the basis for recommendations on elephant conservation and management, keeping in view the socio-economic imperatives of the Asian region.This first comprehensive account of Asian elephant ecology will be of particular interest to conservation biologists and mammalogists.

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Raman Sukumar is an Indian ecologist best known for his work on the ecology of the Asian elephant and wildlife-human conflict. He also works on climate change, and tropical forest ecology. He was born in India in 1955. In 1986, Sukumar helped to design the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, the first of its kind in India. In 1997, he set up the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation, a public charitable trust that incorporates the Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre, an organization that has carried out several field projects in India and other Asian countries on elephants and their habitats. In 2006, he was awarded the International Cosmos Prize, Japan, the first Indian to receive this award. He was also commended by the Prime Minister of India for contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Madras in 1977 and did a Masters in botany at the same university. He obtained a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science in 1985. He was a Fulbright Fellow at Princeton University in 1991 and was the Chair at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science for over eight years (2004–12). He continues to pursue conservation-based scientific research as a professor at this centre and is often called upon to represent Indian wildlife scientists in international, national and regional governmental committees.

Awards and fellowships
1991: Presidential Award of the Chicago Zoological Society, USA
1997: Order of the Golden Ark (The Netherlands)
2000: Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences
2003: Whitley Gold Award for International Nature Conservation UK
2004: T. N. Khoshoo Memorial Award for Conservation Science, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, India
2005: Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy
2006: International Cosmos Prize, Japan
2006: Fellow, Geological Society of India
2013: Fellow, The World Academy of Sciences, Italy

Works
The Asian Elephant: Ecology and Management (1989, Cambridge Univ. Press)
Elephant Days and Nights: Ten years with the Indian Elephant (1994, Oxford Univ. Press)
The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior and Conservation (2003, Oxford Univ. Press)
The Story of Asia's Elephants (2011, Marg Publishers)

Reviews

[Veronica Quie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the year 1962, January, on Jacob sixth birthday, Jacob was taken to Melbourne Zoo, where he rode an elephant. The children climbed a scaffold and perched on rough wooden benches atop the elephant’s back, where Jacob fingers furtively reached for a feel of its warm skin. Jacob said he was dimly aware of the danger involved in mounting such an enormous beast, and the hooked ankhs, or elephant goad, held by the mahout alerted him to the possibility that the creature led a miserable life.

But yet Jacob was grateful for the experience, since it sparked a respect for and love of elephants that has persisted all my life. The Asian elephant is the second-largest land mammal on earth. Highly intelligent, immensely powerful, and with life spans as long as humans’, they have forged a unique relationship with them. Jacob Shell is a geographer whose new book, Giants of the Monsoon Forest, posits a novel and challenging view of this association. While acknowledging that elephants can suffer at human hands, Shell believes that the relationship has helped both Asian elephants and the humans who work with them to survive in the modern world.

[Jasmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of Asian elephants as well as a good source of specific information regarding populations throughout their range. I found it very useful during my M.Sc. dissertation regarding human impacts on Sumatran elephants.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

great reference book