Data from: Release from captivity allows African savannah elephant movement patterns to converge with those of wild and rehabilitated conspecifics

The release of captive animals through rewilding or conservation
translocation is an important strategy for the rehabilitation of
individuals and ecosystems. Assuming that wild animals are better adapted
to their environment than captive ones, comparisons between the behaviour
of released animals and their wild counterparts would allow the evaluation
of rewilding success. We compared the movement patterns of six
captive African savannah elephants, subjected to a three-year soft release
in the western Okavango Delta, Botswana, with those of two elephants
released over a decade previously and of four wild elephants. GPS fixes at
1800hrs were used to calculate daily displacement, 30-minute diurnal and
nocturnal distances, cumulative daily distances, and home ranges for all
study animals; the effects of elephant group, phase, year, and season on
these movement metrics were analysed. Captive elephants were most affected
by the phase and changed their movements after release. After release, the
movement patterns of captive elephants were less different from those of
rehabilitated elephants than wild elephants, possibly due to sample size,
which could indicate that rewilded animals may not be able to fully
approximate the behaviour of wild-born individuals. However, the captive
elephants should exhibit seasonality in movement patterns just like
rehabilitated and wild elephants. These results highlight the critical
importance of long-term monitoring of animals to allow the evaluation of
release and translocation, which is recommended for other similar
studies. The data collection was approved by the UB ethics
committee (UBR/RES/IRB/SOC/132).