Date: 03rd October 2018

Time: 10.00 am for a 10.30 am start

Cost: RM 15 members/ RM 25 non-members

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Peninsular Malaysia is home to approximately 1,500 wild elephants that, in less than two generations, have seen over half of their natural habitat replaced by plantations, dams and urbanized areas. This development has led to a sharp decline in elephant range and increase in human-elephant conflict in the form of crop raiding. What is the future of elephants in Peninsular Malaysia? How can we mitigate the effects of human-elephant co-existence, both on people and elephants? And what are the ecological consequences of local elephant loss?

In this talk we will discuss these issues and introduce the work of the ‘Management & Ecology of Malaysian Elephants’ (MEME), an interdisciplinary collaboration between local wildlife authorities and university researchers that aims to bring a science driven approach to the conservation of Malaysian elephants. MEME is proposing a new elephant conservation strategy based on the combination of wildlife sensitive land using planning, crop protection, economic compensation and education, to promote human-elephant co-existence.  Business will likely lead to the local disappearance of elephants during the 21st century. The good news is that Malaysia can actually afford to conserve its elephants and become a stronghold for wildlife conservation in Southeast Asia.

Ahimsa is a conservation ecologist and an optimist in spite of working in a region with a high rate of biodiversity loss. His main research interest lies in the behaviour, ecology, and conservation of Asian megafauna, particularly elephants, which he has studied for nearly 15 years. He lives and works in Peninsular Malaysia but has also conducted research in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Japan, Mongolia, and other Asian countries. He holds a PhD in Biodiversity Science from the University of Tokyo (2009) and has published over 50 articles in international scientific journals, which have been cited over 1100 times. Currently he is the President-Elect of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and in the past he has been the President of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) Asia Section.