The Fascination with Elephants will be organized at The Bee, Jaya One Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 12th October 2016 (Wednesday).

* For more information, please visit this website https://www.facebook.com/events/306323106414903/

Elephants are like the gardeners of the forest – they plant, fertilize, and prune many plants and create disturbances that facilitate the existence of many other organisms in the forest. But elephants (like rhinos, tapirs, or seladangs) are endangered and their populations are rapidly declining. In this talk, I will discuss the ecological function of Malaysia’s megafauna, their conservation status, and the challenges we’ll need to overcome for them to survive beyond the 21st century. I will also explain why studying them is such a fascinating endeavor.

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Dr Ahimsa is a tropical ecologist who is interested in the ecology and conservation of Asian megafauna and their habitats. His research focuses mainly on the ecological role of large herbivores as agents of seed dispersal and the management of human-wildlife conflicts. He is currently Associate Professor Tropical Conservation Ecology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus.

Before moving to Malaysia, he obtained his PhD from the University of Tokyo and held a research fellowship at the National University of Singapore. He has conducted and / or published studies about wildlife in Spain, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. After several years studying elephants in Sri Lanka, he moved to Southeast Asia (Singapore and Malaysia) to study elephant ecology in tropical rainforests. 

Dr. Ahimsa is also the Principal Investigator of the Management & Ecology of Malaysian Elephants (MEME; www.meme-elephants.org) research project, the President of the Asian Section of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB-Asia), and a council member of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC).