Nearly twenty years ago, an electric fence was erected around the Arabuko Sokoke National Reserve, separating elephants within the forest from the larger population they had once been part of in southern Kenya. Dr. Andy Tighe at University College Dublin is leading a project using genomics to investigate whether a wildlife corridor should be actioned to reestablish gene flow between the forest population and the larger inland population.

With funding from Revive & Restore in 2022, his team has developed local capacity in Kenya to non-invasively genotype forest elephants using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) assays on scat samples. They have used this data to (1) estimate how many are living in the forest and (2) investigate genetic diversity in forest and outside populations. So far, Dr. Tighe has found no genetic distinction between the two groups, suggesting that they almost certainly interbred prior to the fence being built. Importantly, this means there is still time to restore historic gene flow and prevent inbreeding in the forest elephant population by establishing a wildlife corridor.

In addition to research, Dr. Tighe’s team has developed collaborations with numerous local organizations, including the Kenya Wildlife Service, Friends of Arabuko Sokoke, and the Giriama and Wata tribes, to share their results and work toward creating a wildlife corridor.

Revive & Restore is proud to award another year of funding for this project starting in June 2024. Going forward, the team will examine additional genetic data, including mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomal haplotypes, to further investigate genetic diversity and relatedness between the Arabuko Sokoke and outside elephant populations. In addition, Dr. Tighe and his team have successfully developed a protocol for using DNA metabarcoding to examine the diets of elephants. The team validated the accuracy of their method in the Dublin Zoo, where the diets of animals in captivity are known. The method was even able to detect individual ingredients in the biscuits fed to elephants at the zoo. In the next year of their project, they will apply this technique to the elephants of Arabuko Sokoke forest, which will help characterize the diets of these animals and make sure that any locations proposed for the wildlife corridor contain sufficient abundance of the right plant species to sustain their diets. We look forward to updating our supporters on the results of this research in the future, and hope that it will contribute to creating a wildlife corridor for these incredible animals!