Anna and her herd are now monitored via a GPS collar on another adult female elephant in the herd named Mutiara. She is part of Anna’s core family group. Mutiara, which means pearl in the Indonesian language, was collared in February 2019. Mutiara and Anna are part of a herd of up to 30 elephants. This herd shares much of their time and home range with Ginting, Indah, and (to a lesser extent) with Cinta. There are several calves and juveniles of all ages in the herd which indicates healthy natural population growth.
For much of the monitoring period from October 2019 - March 2020, the families of Ginting, Indah and Anna moved together or very close to each other. When all groups joined, they formed a large clan of more than 60 elephants, that spread out over several hundred meters at times. Still in the southern farmland in October, all three herds moved north in November, crossing the WKS corridor road and entering PT ABT and PT LAJ concession areas, where they occasionally met with Freda’s and Cinta’s herd. The situation relaxed significantly once they moved north after intense conflicts on farmlands in the south. However, some conflicts continued to occur on illegal farms located within PT LAJ’s wildlife conservation area. Young bull elephant Nikolas frequently followed the herd around but kept a bit of a distance most of the time.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to take a decent picture of Mutiara in the reported monitoring period, but she was often sigted together with the two other collared females and is generally healthy and well. The photos show Mutiara's herd traveling in a large clan with other herds as well as the Elephant Conservation and Monitoring Units closely monitoring the elephants and working with the local community to protect the elephants in the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem.
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