Abstract:
There is increasing evidence of compromised welfare for elephants managed in captivity.
Should such facilities eventually close, more elephants will need to be rehabilitated and reintegrated
into the wild. The goal of such reintegration would be to restore any physical or psychological
aspects of the elephant that may have been compromised in captivity, followed
by introduction into a free-roaming system where they can interact with other elephants.
However, to achieve this goal, the reintegration methods implemented need to be assessed
to ensure that welfare remains the priority. The objective of this study was to test whether
parameters generally associated with stress and disturbance in African elephants, respond
to changes in potentially stressful environmental conditions, assessed at multiple temporal
scales ranging from minutes to months. The main changes in environmental conditions that
were investigated included the different phases of reintegration of a group of elephants from
captivity into the wild. Stress and disturbance related parameters used for comparisons
included physiological responses, namely the extent of temporal gland secretions (eTGS)
and faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) levels as well as behavioural responses,
namely the display of stereotype and stress-related behaviours. Results showed that eTGS
significantly increased during the initial release of the elephants compared to when in captivity.
Stereotypic behaviours were only recorded during the captive phase and immediately
ceased after release. Faecal GCM levels spiked in the first year after release before
decreasing back to pre-reintegration levels during the third year. These findings indicate
that fGCM levels, the eTGS and disturbance related behaviours all proved effective in
explaining the changes in stress and disturbance experienced by elephants during the initial
years after being reintegrated from captivity into the wild.
