Graham Paul Mcculloch

Trinity College Dublin | TCD · School of Natural Sciences

The 2020 mass mortality of 350 African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Botswana sparked global concern. These deaths have been linked to cyanobacterial toxins (cyanotoxins) in local watering holes (pans), but evidence remains inconclusive. Our study presents the first detailed spatial analysis that explores the relationship between the ecohydrolo...

As human-wildlife conflicts become more frequent, serious and widespread worldwide, they are notoriously challenging to resolve, and many efforts to address these conflicts struggle to make progress. These Guidelines provide an essential guide to understanding and resolving human-wildlife conflict. The Guidelines aim to provide foundations and prin...

Elephants frequently raid crops within their ranges in Africa and Asia. These raids can greatly impact agricultural productivity and food security for farmers. Therefore, there is a need to explore cost-effective measures that would reduce the susceptibility of crops and agricultural fields to elephant raiding, and further promote sustainable human...

Throughout the world, people resettle to reduce vulnerability to potentially dangerous wildlife, including elephants. In turn, they may become subject to development policies and practices that can either exacerbate or alleviate their vulnerability. Our ethnographic study in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, where 18,000 elephants share territory wit...

Human‐wildlife conflict, where interactions have negative impacts on both people and animals, is complex with underlying drivers and broad ecological and social impacts. From individual incidents and perceptions, to contemporary patterns and long‐term trends, a range of information about human‐wildlife conflict can help understand and manage challe...

1. Elephants frequently raid farmers’ crops within their ranges in Africa and Asia. This can have a large impact on agricultural productivity and food security for farmers. 2. Previous studies have examined susceptibility of crop fields to elephant raids using field characteristics such as field size and proximity to water sources. However, there a...

To more effectively protect biodiversity and promote sustainable development, transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) aim to enhance wildlife flows across national borders. This is true of the world's largest terrestrial TFCA, the Kavango-Zambezi (KAZA), home to half of Africa's savannah elephants that move across five countries in a mixed-use lan...

Expansion of human settlements and development have undeniable impacts on wildlife and habitats. Yet wildlife continues to persist in human-modified environments. While shifting patterns of wildlife landscape use in response to development is well established, less is known about how risk avoidance by animals impacts their resource access. Our rese...

Where people and elephants share space, the chance of human-elephant interactions (HEI) shape how people make livelihood decisions, including where and when to harvest resources. In the Eastern Panhandle of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, elephant populations have doubled in the past 10 years. Currently 16,000 men and women from different ethnic ba...

Tree and grass quality on the African savannah shows seasonal variation, driving mixed-feeding herbivores to switch between browsing and grazing. During this switch, crop consumption could be an attractive alternative to browsing. We analysed elephant diet variability in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, using faecal stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ^...

Human-wildlife conflict has serious conservation consequences, both for populations of wildlife and for the people who live alongside them. Connectivity analyses can incorporate species-specific landscape resistance, and therefore have the potential to be used to understand where wildlife moves and causes conflict with people. We used circuit theor...

Elephants can cause negative consequences for both themselves and for humans by consuming agricultural crops. It is unclear whether savanna elephant crop consumption is merely opportunistic behaviour or related to insufficient quality of natural forage. We analysed the role of vegetation quality on elephant crop consumption. We focused on the role...

Context Many wildlife populations exist outside of protected areas, and it is necessary to understand how these animals use a landscape mosaic that includes humans. Patterns of landscape use in space and time can help inform strategies to mitigate negative interactions between people and wildlife. Objectives We aimed to estimate the landscape util...

Satellite telemetry is an increasingly utilized technology in wildlife research, and current devices can track individual animal movements at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. However, as we enter the golden age of satellite telemetry, we need an in-depth understanding of the main technological, species-specific and environmental fact...

R-code for boosted beta regression (Fix acquisition rate). (R)

Covariate partial effects on the variability of the fix acquisition rate. (PDF)

Tagged individuals per species. (PDF)

Covariate partial effects on the variability of the Overall fix success rate. (PDF)

Trends in observed data. (PDF)

Global dataset for boosted beta regressions. (CSV)

Description of data fields in S1 Data. (CSV)

Satellite telemetry articles published. (PDF)

Distribution of response variables and covariates. (PDF)

Unit purchase and operation costs. (PDF)

R-code for boosted beta regression (Overall fix success rate). (R)

Standardized data collection questionnaire. (PDF)

Satellite telemetry evaluations. (PDF)

In social-ecological systems around the world, human-wildlife interactions are on the rise, often with negative consequences. This problem is particularly salient in areas where populations of humans and wildlife are increasing and share limited space and resources. However, few studies look at how both people and wildlife navigate shared spaces. T...

Community-based conservation (CBC) emerged in the 1980s as part of a paradigm shift from wilderness-minded preservation to people-centered conservation. The change prompted a focus on communities as both subjects and agents of conservation. Recently, conservationists have a new paradigm, one that characterizes the planet as being in the “Anthropoce...

Elephant crop raiding is one of the most relevant forms of human-elephant conflict (HEC) in Africa. Northern Botswana holds the largest population of African elephants in the world, and in the eastern Okavango Panhandle, 16,000 people share and compete for resources with more than 11,000 elephants. Hence, it is not surprising this area represents a...

Area of land cultivated as a proportion of agricultural land allocated in the eastern Panhandle between the years 2008–2014. (TIFF)

Crop loss due to foraging elephants represents one of the most important human-elephant impacts that can lead to conservation conflicts in areas where wild elephants interact with people. Effective solutions to reducing the impact of elephant crop-use on local livelihoods are thus essential to fostering co-existence between elephants and people. In...

Elephant crop raiding is one of the most relevant forms of human-elephant conflict (HEC) in Africa. Northern Botswana holds the largest population of African elephants in the world, and in the eastern Okavango Panhandle, 16,000 people share and compete for resources with more than 11,000 elephants. Hence, it is not surprising this area represents a...

Introduction After poaching, elephant crop-raiding (ECR hereafter) is the most prevalent form of human-elephant conflict across Africa. Yield loss and threat peoples’ lives generate negative attitudes from local communities, undermining elephant conservation efforts. A key strategy to stop this crisis is looking at solutions for ECR. Elephant deter...

Finding ways for people and wildlife to coexist requires affording both parties access to critical resources and space, but also a behavioural change by both to avoid conflict. We investigated pathway use in a population of free-ranging African elephants Loxodonta africana in the Okavango Panhandle, Botswana that share their range with humans in a...

In Botswana’s Okavango Delta panhandle, fifteen thousand people share and compete for resources with a population of more than fifteen thousand African elephants (Loxodonta africana). Unsurprisingly, this area represents a real hotspot for human-elephant conflict (HEC), which manifests itself in the form of elephant crop-raiding (i.e. the destructi...

The Lesser Flamingo Phoeniconaias minor is a nomadic species, which inhabits shallow alkaline lakes and pans in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. The extent of genetic diversity and the degree of differentiation within and among populations are important factors to determine in order to help manage and conserve the species, categorised as Near...

In 1998, BirdLife Botswana (the BirdLife partner in Botswana) identifi ed and documented 12 sites as Important Bird Areas (IBAs) of Botswana. However, monitoring efforts at these sites have lacked adequate co-ordination and the success of management and conservation efforts have, therefore, been diffi cult to gauge. In 2007, BirdLife Botswana, toge...

As part of Birdlife Botswana’s commitment to maintaining a network of sites that are critical for birds both nationally and internationally, the Makgadikgadi Pans Important Bird Area (IBA) is monitored annually following BirdLife’s global monitoring framework. This framework is based on the State – Pressure – Response model that has been adopted by...

As part of Birdlife Botswana’s commitment to maintaining a network of sites that are critical for birds both nationally and internationally, the Makgadikgadi Pans Important Bird Area (IBA) is monitored annually following BirdLife’s global monitoring framework. This framework is based on the State – Pressure – Response model that has been adopted by...

Aerial surveys of flamingo breeding colonies were conducted during three consecutive breeding seasons between October 1998 and July 2001, in the south of Sua Pan, Makgadikgadi, Botswana. Rainfall during the rainy seasons of 1998–1999, 1999–2000 and 2000–2001 was 442mm, 851mm and 348mm, respectively, and had a major effect on breeding success of bot...

This study presents results on the fluid and salt chemistry for the Makgadikgadi, a substantial continental basin in the semi-arid Kalahari. The aims of the study are to improve understanding of the hydrology of such a system and to identify the sources of the solutes and the controls on their cycling within pans. Sampling took place against the ba...

A preliminary analysis of the phylogeographic pattern of the two main African populations of Lesser Flamingo Phoenicopterus minor from East and southern Africa was carried out to evaluate possible gene flow. A fragment of mitochondrial DNA encoding the NADH dehydrogenase subunit 2 gene (ND2) was sequenced in 27 specimens from these two populations...

Fluctuating hydrochemistry, as a result of extreme hydrological regimes, imposes major physiological constraints on the biota of ephemeral saline lakes. While the inverse relationship between salinity and zooplankton species richness is well-known across salinity gradients, few studies have documented closely the response of zooplankton to seasonal...

The Makgadikgadi Salt Pans in Botswana are one of the most important breeding sites in southern Africa ....