Kathleen Gobush

Vulcan Inc./ University of Washington · Wildlife/ Biology

Robust monitoring programs are essential for understanding changes in wildlife population dynamics and distribution over time, especially for species of conservation concern. In this study, we applied a rapid non-invasive sampling approach to the Critically Endangered African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), at nationwide scale in its principa...

Effective wildlife management requires information on population status and distribution. Survey methods that provide estimates of these population parameters can vary greatly in effort required, area covered, precision of estimates, and cost. Trade-offs are required, because increasing precision and area coverage generally requires increasing fiel...

The most comprehensive data on poaching of African elephants comes from the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) program, which reports numbers of illegally killed carcasses encountered by rangers. Recent studies utilizing MIKE data have reported that poaching of African elephants peaked in 2011 and has been decreasing through 2018. C...

Populations of African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) have been declining due to poaching, human‐elephant conflict, and habitat loss. Understanding the causes of these declines could aid in stabilizing elephant populations. We used data from the Great Elephant Census, a 19‐country aerial survey of savannah elephants conducted in 2014 and 2...

Giraffe populations have declined in abundance by almost 40% over the last three decades, and the geographic ranges of the species (previously believed to be one, now defined as four species) have been significantly reduced or altered. With substantial changes in land uses, loss of habitat, declining abundance, translocations, and data gaps, the ex...

African elephants are under threat, especially from poaching for illegal ivory trade. New monitoring data show a dramatic increase in elephant poaching in northern Botswana, where the largest remaining population of African elephants resides.

Significance C-14 dating methods can be used to determine the time of death of wildlife products. We evaluate poaching patterns of elephants in Africa by using ¹⁴ C to determine lag time between elephant death and recovery of ivory by law enforcement officials. Most ivory in recent seizures has lag times of less than 3 y. Lag times for ivory origin...

We determine the prevalence and characteristics of interactions between the Hawaiian monk seal (Nemonachus schauinslandi) and nearshore fisheries in the main Hawaiian Islands and examine impacts to the subpopulation. We documented 139 monk seal-fisheries interactions between 1976 and 2014: 132 hookings typically involving large circle hooks accompa...

Conservation efforts to better understand how wildlife populations respond to environmental change and anthropogenic disturbance has led to a proliferation of research examining physiological indicators of stress response in wildlife. Glucocorticoid stress hormones (GCs), typically cortisol and corticosterone, are among the most frequently measured...

More than a decade of shark predation on nursing and newly weaned pups of the endangered Hawaiian monk seal (Monachus schauinslandi) has significantly contributed to a steep decline of the French Frigate Shoals (FFS) subpopulation.In an effort to develop non‐lethal methods of mitigating predation, the feasibility of deploying potential shark deterr...

Background/Question/Methods Endocrine profiles of stress and nutrition in free-ranging wildlife provide crucial insight into how individuals respond to natural and human-induced disturbances. Tracking these physiological measures over time may allow scientists and managers to understand species-specific response patterns with improved resolution...

Food limitation and poor body condition are significant factors affecting the survival of juvenile Hawaiian monk seals Monachus schauinslandi in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Previous research has indicated that juvenile monk seals infected with cestodes are in worse body condition than those that are uninfected. To test whether individual gro...

Tanzania and Zambia are petitioning the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to “downlist” the conservation status of their elephants to allow sale of stockpiled ivory. But just 2 years after CITES placed a 9-year moratorium on future ivory sales (1), elephant poaching is on the rise. The petitioning countries are major s...

Poaching removed adult female elephants, Loxodonta africana, from a social system centred on kin support and female philopatry, creating a natural experiment in many matrifocal African elephant populations. We hypothesized that core groups lacking kin display less cohesion and cooperate and compete with elephants outside of their core group more fr...

We use genetic measures of relatedness and observations of female bonding to examine the demographic signature of historically heavy poaching of a population of free-ranging African elephants. We collected dung samples to obtain DNA and observed behaviour from 102 elephant families over a 25-month period in 2003-2005 in Mikumi National Park, Tanzan...

Widespread poaching prior to the 1989 ivory ban greatly altered the demographic structure of matrilineal African elephant (Loxodonta africana) family groups in many populations by decreasing the number of old, adult females. We assessed the long-term impacts of poaching by investigating genetic, physiological, and reproductive correlates of a distu...