Ithaca College

A project headed by physics department chair Bruce Thompson and Peter Wrege, senior research associate at Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology, to monitor elephant behavior in response to seismic exploration activities using a combined acoustic and seismic method was funded in December 2006. Professor Thompson and IC student Nik Batruch '08 traveled with Wrege to Gabon in March 2007 and installed listening units at ten sites.

The original funding was for monitoring before and during the exploration activity. Recently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given the project a grant of $12,000 for a valuable post study. These funds will be used for installing a fresh set of batteries to acquire three months of data after the exploration activity has ceased and for data analysis.