Gus’ first two months in the Makgadikgadi

Hello/Dumela!
My name is Gus Pitfield, I am 23 years old and I grew up in London and finished my BSc in Biology from the University of York just over a year ago. Since then I have been living and working in Penzance, a place very close to my heart. After this amazing ‘time off’ working on an eco construction project overlooking Mounts Bay I decided I wanted to get back into science, so I applied to Bristol University to work with the head of the mammal research team, Prof. Stephen Harris, and was accepted to do a Masters by research on elephant social behaviour. As a result I have moved out to the Makgadikgadi & Nxai Pan National Park (MNPNP), here in Botswana, to work with Elephants for Africa (EfA). I hope to leave here having achieved two things… Firstly I hope to discover something new and interesting about a very special population of elephants. Secondly I want to have contributed something towards the wider goals of a great research charity, whether that is in a scientific capacity or otherwise.

View from outside the office

I arrived on the 16th of November 2014 and began working with the elephant within a couple of days, since then the work has not stopped, apart from having some good fun times over Christmas! It’s been a steep learning curve, there has been a lot to take in; including everything from getting to grips with the database to ageing the elephants in the field, and it’s all a very welcome challenge! I really enjoy the field work side of things, it is still hard sometimes to believe that I am lucky enough to be working somewhere that is so beautiful and biologically interesting. I don’t think seeing a group of elephant will ever get boring, the more I learn the more engaging it becomes!

Camp is a fantastic place, especially now we have put in some good shifts to add a few homely touches. I am writing this overlooking the Boteti River in the shade of some large trees that reside behind our newly renovated office building. The scenery around camp makes for a very inspiring place to work and come up with ideas, in my opinion the best way to study an environment is to immerse yourself in it… I feel this is a great place to do that. The area I am sat now is my favourite spot in camp, before Christmas we had two large bull elephant that regularly came to eat and drink in the shallow waters opposite our office on the far side of the Boteti River. They made for a pleasant distraction from data formatting. I would hope that I have made use of myself around camp by mucking in with the practical side of things, building and fixing things wherever possible. Working with my hands is a big passion of mine and I’m glad I am able to continue doing it here.

Baby monkey in camp observing researchers

Specifically, I am here to carry out a social network analysis (SNA); this is a study of social groups as networks of individual animals (nodes) connected by social ties. It is a powerful tool that can unearth structures that exist within a population of animals. I hope to discover some of these structures; I would like to know how an elephant’s age is connected with its position within society. Another interesting question I hope to answer is whether elephants have ‘allies’ that they spend more time with than other individuals. Maybe in the future this can be combined with genetic data that EfA have been collecting, which could be very interesting. Hopefully my MSc project will play a part in understanding this complicated part of elephant biology.

I am extremely lucky to be working in such a fantastic place and with such an iconic species. I would like to thank Prof. Stephen Harris and Dr. Kate Evans for the opportunity. I would also like to thank my project manager Dr. Jess Isden for taking the time to teach me the methods that make everything possible.