News and Stories

By: Hoffman Coexistence Impact Fellows – Mo & Kie, Bring the Elephant Home, Thailand

Exciting news – Mo & Kie graduated their Hoffman Coexistence Impact Fellowship Program this week! The Fellowship Program is a dynamic initiative that contributes to wildlife conservation, empowers emerging conservationists, promotes diversity, and uplifts the zoo’s connection to its global conservation efforts and local communities. Their work took place at Bring the Elephant Home (BTEH) in Thailand.

In Thailand, Cincinnati Zoo’s collaboration with BTEH focuses on creating a community-based elephant monitoring and identification program that will facilitate human-elephant coexistence by leveraging advanced technologies and mobilizing communities. By adopting a community-based approach, the project will alleviate resource pressure on elephant conservation organizations and engage the communities who coexist with Asian elephants. This project aims to increase the level of tolerance towards elephants, ensuring that communities feel safer and more empathetic towards elephants.

Why We Do This Research

Across Thailand, as more land is converted for farming, ecotourism and housing, animals that once roamed freely are finding their world shrinking and fragmenting.  Asian elephants are among the most impacted species. Drawn outside protected area boundaries by nutritious crops, water and easy forage, they increasingly find themselves face to face with the very communities whose lands they’re crossing.

The story unfolds in Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site celebrated for its exceptional biodiversity. The Complex includes four protected areas: Kaeng Krachan National Park, Kui Buri National Park, Chaloem Phrakiat Thai Prachan National Park, and Mae Nam Phach Wildlife Sanctuary. (World Heritage Centre, 2026). Our  focus, Kui Buri National Park , supports healthy populations of Asian elephants, gaur (Bos guarus), and leopards (Panthera pardus), making it a key focal area for wildlife management in the region.

So why does this matter? Because until now, no one had systematically mapped where elephants go once they step outside of Kui Buri’s borders, or why some areas pull them in more than others. Our goal was to fill that gap.

How we did it

Rather than waiting to spot an elephant in the wild (a thrilling but unreliable way to collect data), we went looking for the signs they leave behind: footprints, dung, and trampled vegetation. We divided the agricultural landscape surrounding Kui Buri into a grid of 1.5 square km (.58 square miles), then walked routes through each one, systematically logging every elephant sign we found, and just as importantly, every grid where we found none. We also held informal conversations with farmers and rangers to learn about elephant presence and movement in the area.

Sometimes, kind community members would give us rides on their motorbikes to the nearest survey location. Village dogs gave us company as we traversed through the region (only to eventually give up and forcing us to carry them back!).

Between November 2024 and March 2025, our mighty team of two covered 410.7 km (255.2 miles) on foot, surveying 165 grid cells across a landscape touching 21 villages. The result: 328 individual elephant sign detections, with elephant activity confirmed in 62 of the 165 grids and as many as 20 separate signs turning up in a single grid!

More than once, we felt that prickly, hair-raising sense that an elephant or a gaur was closer than we realized, somewhere in the brush just out of sight. Thankfully, those goosebumps didn’t last long. Dry-season temperatures climbing to 35–45°C (95-113°F) had a way of warming us right back up.

Once the fieldwork wrapped, the real marathon began: more than six months of mapping, statistical modeling, testing which combinations of environmental and human factors best explained why elephants showed up in some areas and not others.

What we found

Four factors stood out as the strongest predictors of which areas were most used by elephants.

We found that areas with ranger stations and ecotourism most attracted elephants likely due to greater protection against poaching, and reliable resources like water holes, salt licks, and maintained grasslands.

Well-connected forests mattered a lot! Grids where forest patches linked up with each other saw more use by elephants. Connected forests are more likely to be used by elephants as safe corridors to travel through, and as refuge to escape the heat during the day, rather than forcing them to cross exposed, risky terrain.

Oil palm plantations turned out to be unexpected hideouts. Areas with more oil palm coverage saw more elephant use, likely because mature palm canopy is dense and can provide shade as they move through agricultural landscapes.

Surprisingly, we found a negative relationship between pineapple coverage and elephant habitat use.  Despite elephants having a well-earned reputation for raiding pineapple crops, grids with more pineapple coverage were actually less used by elephants. Our best explanation: pineapple farms tend to come with more human activity and disturbance, and even an elephant with a serious pineapple craving may decide the risk isn’t worth the reward. It’s a finding that runs against conventional wisdom, and one we think is worth digging into further.

What’s next

With the first dataset analyzed, our focus shifts to turning these findings into action. In areas that are more frequently used by elephants, amplifying awareness among nearby communities will be essential to preventing dangerous encounters before they happen. And because elephants favor well-connected forests, maintaining and restoring habitat connectivity should be a top priority for land managers looking to keep elephants in the forest and out of harm’s way.

There’s also more to learn. Our surveys captured a single dry season snapshot. Elephant behavior may shift considerably once the rain returns and the landscape changes with them. Future surveys spanning both wet and dry seasons will help us understand how these patterns hold up across the year.

For now, though, this study gives us our clearest picture yet of how elephants navigate the world just beyond Kui Buri’s borders, and a solid foundation for the work still ahead in helping people and elephants share this landscape more safely.