DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sj3tx967x
title: Data from: Sundaic elephants prefer habitats on the periphery of protected areas

description: 1. Protected Areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of global conservation
 strategies. PAs, however, are not equally effective for all threatened
 taxa, and it is important to understand taxa-specific effectiveness of PAs
 networks. 2. In this study we evaluate the role of the PAs network on the
 protection of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and their habitats in
 Southeast Asia’s Sundaic region. Since Asian elephants tend to prefer
 secondary forests or forest gaps, we predicted that PAs would not
 represent the species' preferred habitats. We conducted the most
 comprehensive analysis of Asian elephant space and habitat use to date
 through home range estimations and Step Selection Function analyses using
 over 600,000 GPS locations from 102 different elephants from Peninsular
 Malaysia and Borneo. 3. Our results revealed important similarities in the
 habitat use of elephants in both regions, with both females and males in
 Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah preferring secondary forest, forest gaps,
 and areas of regrowth and new plantations. 4. Our results supported our
 prediction that PAs do not represent Asian elephants’ preferred habitats,
 since for most of the elephants, more than half of their ranges were
 outside PAs and the probability of selection values for both sexes in both
 geographical areas were lower inside than outside the PAs. 5. Synthesis
 and applications: Our analysis suggests that conservation strategies need
 to acknowledge that the long-term survival of Asian elephants in the
 Sundaic region relies on our capacity to promote human-elephant
 coexistence at the boundaries of PAs. We advocate that Asian elephant
 conservation strategies should be based on the following three key points:
 1) large PAs with core areas where elephants can find safety and
 potentially survive in the long term; 2) promoting connectivity among PAs
 using a system of wildlife corridors; and 3) effective human-elephant
 conflict management outside PAs.
description: <strong>Core and home range areas
 shapefiles</strong> Shapefiles of core and home range areas of Asian
 elephants estimated using the Kernel Density Estimator at 95% and 50% of
 the utilization distribution. <em>core&homerangeareas.rar</em>   <strong>Probability of selection raster maps</strong> Raster maps of probability of selection obtained using Step Selection Functions models for female and male elephants of Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo. <em>probabilityofselectionrasters.rar</em>   <strong>Spatial covariates</strong> Compiled and processed environmental variables used to evaluate the habitat use by the elephants in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah, which includes variables associated with the land use (e.g., proportion of primary forest) and distance to forest and plantations (oil palm and rubber) boundaries, as well as terrain covariates (elevation and slope). <em>spatialcovariates.rar</em>   <strong>Protected Areas shapefiles</strong> Shapefiles of Protected Areas included within the Managed Elephants Ranges of Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo, which were obtained from the World Database of Protected Areas (www.protectedplanet.net). These files are not included along this dataset, but instructions for their download and treatement are described in the README file of this dataset.
description: This data set should be open using a Geographic Information
 System software such as ArcMap or QGIS.