Transfrontier wildlife corridors can be successful
conservation tools, connecting protected areas and reducing
the impact of habitat fragmentation on mobile species.
Urban wildlife corridors have been proposed as a potential
mitigation tool to facilitate the passage of elephants through
towns without causing conflict with urban communities.
However, because such corridors are typically narrow and
close to human development, wildlife (particularly large
mammals) may be less likely to use them. We used remote-sensor
camera traps and global positioning system
collars to identify the movement patterns of African elephants
Loxondonta africana through narrow, urban corridors
in Botswana. The corridors were in three types of
human-dominated land-use designations with varying levels
of human activity: agricultural, industrial and openspace
recreational land. We found that elephants used the
corridors within all three land-use designations and we
identified, using a model selection approach, that season,
time of day and rainfall were important factors in determining
the presence of elephants in the corridors. Elephants
moved more slowly through the narrow corridors compared
with their movement patterns through broader, wide-ranging
corridors. Our results indicate that urban wildlife corridors
are useful for facilitating elephants to pass through
urban areas.