Approximately 5,000 elephants are kept as captive animals in the Union of Myanmar. The majority of these are owned by the Myanmar Timber Enterprise and are used to extract timber from the teak forests once felled. Elephant registration books have been kept for many generations, noting details of these working elephants such as age, sex, area of origin, condition, temperament, dam/sire elephants etc.
This vast database has never before been analysed. Dr Mar has spent many years compiling the information, and seeks to use it to study population fluctuations, especially the links between births, deaths, immigration and emigration. She will also analyse patterns of veterinary care and husbandry of captive working elephants and from these draw conclusions for the management of elephants in captivity and in the wild.
Project Update: August 2001 The first three months, from November, 2000 to January, 2001 have been hectic- working on my huge data set containing 6000 plus animal records; data cleaning and filtering is the first part of my work. At the same time, I spend as much possible as I can for literature searches at the British Library, Institute of Zoology and University College London Libraries.
Much of February, 2001 was devoted to participating in the International Workshop on Domesticated Asian Elephant in Bangkok, Thailand organized by the FAO. The workshop included visits to Chaingmai and Lampang. I took opportunities visiting national and zoological parks and private elephant camps of Northern Thailand involved in tourist businesses. The main topic discussed in this workshop was registration of domesticated elephants, in order to make ease of law enforcement and better veterinary care and animal welfare. The need to initiate networking between elephant holding facilities and within the range countries was also discussed. It was a rewarding trip for me as I learnt that the elephant problems were very varied country to country. I present a paper in this workshop. The title of my paper was "The Studbook of Timber Elephants of Myanmar with the special reference to survivorship analysis". During my stay in Thailand, I was invited to give presentation of my work at the Veterinary Faculty of the Ketsersert University.
After my return to England, I registered on the Mphil/PhD programme at the Biology Department of the University College London (UCL) in March, 2001; Professor Dr Adrian Lister from UCL and Dr. Georgina Mace, Director of Science of the Institute of Zoology (IOZ) gracefully acted as my supervisors. Research Fellow, Dr. Marcus Rowcliffe of the Institute of Zoology helped me in statistical part of my study. From April until June, I used most of my time writing my first article. The title is "Factors affecting mortality of calves born from the Working elephants of Myanmar". The draft is now in the hands of my supervisors and we are planning to submit this article in the Journal of Conservation Biology, before end of August, 2001. Starting from July, 2001, I was preparing for the next article. Although the title of this article has not been chosen, I am planning to emphasize on reproductive performance of working cow elephants. I shared part of my time writing proposals for my next year funding for field trip in the Elephant range countries of Asia. I have chosen Morris Animal Foundation and Wildlife Conservation Society of the United States to submit proposals for the 2002/2003 academic year. At the same time, I worked closely with Dr Susan Mikota, the founder of Elephant Care International, who is now resided temporary in Sumatra. Through emails, we shared our experience and supported her as much possible as I can in veterinary care of Indonesian elephants under her care.
I was honoured by an invitation to continue the membership of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group and Veterinary Specialist Group, which are under the umbrella of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Species Survival Commission (IUCN/SSC). I was also invited a member of Field Veterinary Programme of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx Zoo, USA.
2nd RSG Grant Awarded Dr Mar received a continuation grant in May 2003 to do further work in light of her recent findings. Her new study aims to investigate the differing costs and benefits of rearing male and female offspring for Asian elephant mothers. It is based on the records of over 3,000 calves born to the logging elephants of Myanmar during the last five decades.
In addition, information on birth sex ratio and mate preferences of females with respect to tusk status, age and birth origins of males will be provided. This information is crucial if effective programmes are to be designed that enable captive populations to be self-sustaining thus removing the need to supplement them with wild caught animals.
Project Update: July 2003 The UK-based Elephant Family (EF) organization has sponsored my recent (8 week) trip to two SE Asian countries. The main intention of my trip has been to get deeper understanding of the social factors that cause declining of elephants in captivity in the original range countries of Asia. The EF would like to have my independent view of welfare status of Asian elephants in two range states (Sumatra in Indonesia and Jaipur, Rajasthan in North India).
My findings would likely to assist EF to help conserve these elephants under human care. Through my findings in these two countries EF will lay foundations:
a) to facilitate the establishment of a health care monitoring system, including micro-chipping of elephants,
b) lobby funds from local Governments and international NGOs,
c) to find ways to get better job opportunities for captive elephants,
d) to build local political will and assessment of longer-term private-public-partnerships.
During this trip, I will train local vets and mahouts (elephant keepers) by sharing experiences of elephant management keeping systems in Burma. I will train Indonesian and Indian vets to assess body condition of elephants and develop models of training, health check and routine veterinary
Project Update: February 2003 Here is a copy of an article at appeared in The Hindustan Times on 28 December, 2002, featuring my work:
Final Report Read about the activities undertaken and findings of this project in the final report below.
Further Project Update and Articles: January 2009 "I have successfully finished my PhD in 2007 and now working as a Post-Doc at the University of Sheffield. I recently received NERC Standard Grant to continue and expand my elephant research in Myanmar. The title of the grant is “Senescence in mammals with extreme lifespan". Rufford Small Grants have been immensely helpful to me in achieving all these grants and job opportunity. I even received a letter from the Dean of UCL after my viva.
From the continuation grant, I have not only finished my PhD but also 2 book chapters and an article in "Science", where I give fully acknowledgement to Rufford Grant (please see article below)".
Booster Grant Awarded Read about the latest development with this project http://www.ruffordsmallgrants.org/rsg/projects/khyne_mar
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