Home ranges and social organization of female elephants in northern Kenya

Home ranges and social organization of African elephants Loxodonta africana (Blumenbach) from the Laikipia-Sambura population of northern Kenya were studied. Twenty female elephants from this population were fitted with radio collars and monitored for up to 25 months. Home range sizes of radio-collared elephants varied from 102 to 5527 km(2), the widest variation that is known for a single population. Several subpopulations could be distinguished. The ranges of elephants from one subpopulation overlapped with those from other subpopulations, and elephants from different subpopulations were occasionally seen in the same groups, although they had different movement patterns and home range sizes, and tended to occur in groups of different sizes. Members of the same subpopulation were often close together if they were in the same area, whereas members of different subpopulations seldom came closer than 2 km. There was no evidence for the existence of 'clans' within subpopulations, and it is suggested that this difference from other studied elephant populations is related to the much greater distances over which the Laikipia-Samburu elephants move.