The ELP Team - Past & Present
- Current Team
- Colleagues
- Extended Family
- Volunteers

© Marie Read
Peter in Australia.
Peter Wrege
Peter became the director of the Elephant Listening Project (ELP) in January 2007. A behavioral ecologist, Peter has made Ithaca his base for more than 30 years, and has been fortunate to work for long periods of time in the field, observing animals in their natural environments and trying to understand what makes them tick. Although he has worked in such exotic places as Venezuela, Panamá, and the Galapagos, his eight years of research in Kenya, East Africa, were particularly influential. He is very happy to be back in Africa to carry on ELP’s research program in the equatorial rainforests of the Congo Basin.
Daniela, Gabon.
Daniela Hedwig
Daniela joined us in 2016 in a Post-doc position, having studied the vocal behavior of gorillas in Central African Republic and Uganda for her PhD. Besides her academic background, her passion for the conservation of African wildlife has led her to initiate community outreach projects in collaboration with national authorities and NGOs. She also spearheaded a biomonitoring program in a National Park in Gabon. Immediately before she joined us, she was working with WWF Germany on wildlife crime related issues, focusing on the African elephant poaching crisis. She is excited to have the opportunity to apply her experience in field-based research and practical conservation efforts to monitor forest elephant populations and to better understand the functions of their vocalizations.

©Joe Rowland
Liz in Ithaca, New York.

© Katy Payne
Andrea on the mirador (platform) above Dzanga Bai.
Andrea Turkalo
A biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and a member of the IUCN's African Elephant Specialist Group, Andrea has devoted the past 20 years to the first demographic study of African forest elephants. She has identified and catalogued over 4,000 individuals dwelling in the Dzanga National Park, Central African Republic and continues to track their family lives and associations. As a founding member of the Elephant Listening Project, Andrea's knowledge of this population is an integral part of the project.

© Melissa Groo
Katy at the edge of Dzanga Bai, Central African Republic.
Katy Payne
A lifelong naturalist and amateur musician, Katy began her career studying the evolving songs of the humpback whale. She shifted her focus to elephants in 1984, when she and two colleagues discovered infrasonic calling in elephants by recording at a zoo. The studies that followed from this discovery have shown that elephants use their low-frequency calls to coordinate their social behavior over long distances. She founded ELP in 1999, and was the leader of the project until 2006, when she officially retired. Katy is now writing a book about forest elephants, and continues to play a critical role in all ELP's activities.

© Peter Wrege
Modeste Doukaga near LangouZÿ Bai, Ivindo.
Modeste Douckaga
Modeste has been observing and identifying elephants in Gabon for more than five years. As part of the Wildlife Conservation Society elephant research team, he has been the key person establishing a database of elephant identities for Langoue Bai, Ivindo National Park.
Modeste is now teaching new researchers about elephant observation and identification.

© Peter Wrege
Olivia installing an ARU near the 'CEB4' clearing.
Olivia Schultz
Oliva works with the Elephant Monitoring Team at the Wildlife Conservation Society - Gabon, consulting on strategy and developing initiatives for elephant conservation.
She plays a key role in keeping ELP's acoustic monitoring projects ticking over and helping us identify places where we could assist in attaining conservation goals.

© Peter Wrege
Clement (right) with Russel, learning the ropes of deploying an ARU.
Clement Inkamba-Nkulu & Russel Tsoumou
Clement and Russel are Congolese biologists who have been working with WCS-Congo for many years. Clement recently completed his MSc degree, studying the movement of forest elephants among a cluster of clearings in Congo, including the Dzanga clearing studied by Andrea Turkalo.
Clement is principle investigator on a new study at two recently discovered bais in Congo, just east of Djobo Bai in Gabon. This is a critical area for forest elephants and currently under considerable pressure from poachers. Clement and Russel are working with ELP to collect acoustic data at these bais and also to make the first attempts to use night-vision photography to identify individuals visiting the bai at night.
Compagnie Equitoriale des Bois
CEB was the first company in Gabon to operate under the principles of sustainable forestry management. CEB produced Central Africa's first comprehensive forestry management plan. Under Gabonese law, the forest must be managed on a sustainable basis. The company is owned by Precious Woods.
ELP has been recording elephants at several forest clearings, or bais (the foresters call them 'salines') in this concession, including one that turns out to be the most active bai known to date in Gabon!
Wildlife Conservation Society
WCS has been working in Gabon since 1985 when Richard Barnes started a 4-year project to estimate the number of elephants there. WCS has been working with Gabon National Parks Office to manage a number of the protected areas there. ELP has been working as a collaborator with WCS since 2007, providing new and different information about forest elephants to help in the conservation effort.

© Melissa Groo
Mya in Ithaca, New York.
Mya Thompson
A member of the Elephant Listening Project since its inception in 1999, Mya took a break to study for a PhD and have two babies! Her research focused on improving acoustic monitoring methodologies for African forest elephants and understanding the role vocal signals play in maintaining their social system. She was awarded her doctorate in September 2009.
Mya now pursues her passion for education as part of the education program at the Lab of Ornithology (close at hand for frequent consultation about all things elephant).

Melissa in Shindagan Hollow near Ithaca, New York.
Melissa Groo
Melissa Groo spent many years as a research assistant with ELP since its inception in 1999. Amongst many roles, she helped to design and then populated our video database with more than a thousand annotated clips of forest elephant behavior. She maintains listserves on African/Asian elephant news and resources, sponsored by Save the Elephants (selected articles archived here, where you can also sign up for the listserves or visit our International Elephant News page).

© Peter Wrege
Nicolas learning how to use climbing equipment.
Nicolas Bout
Nico spent many years working to understand the ecosystem known as the Plateaux Bateke, with a special commitment to the conservation of large mammals, especially the forest elephant.
As head of the Bateke Elephant Project he made important strides toward expanding our knowledge of how elephants use this ecosystem, and increasing the interest and commitment of local people to find alternative land uses that are compatible with sharing the landscape with elephants and other important fauna.
From 2007-2010 Nico was a key collaborator with ELP in our monitoring efforts in the Bateke region.

© Katy Payne
Richard (right) with two staff members of Kakum National Park.
Richard Barnes
Dr. Richard Barnes was one of ELP's founding members. He organized and participated in ELP's work in Kakum National Park, Ghana. He is a conservationist affiliated to Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and the University of California, San Diego. He has worked on elephants and primates throughout Africa, and refined the technique of making systematic counts of elephant dung piles to chronicle forest elephants' presence and abundance.

© Melissa Groo
Steve (left) with Mya and Andrea at the field camp in Dzanga National Park..
Steve Gulick
Steve was ELP's first engineer, and accompanied us to the field in 2000. He is now an expert in remote sensing for wildlife protection, and you can find him heading up his own organization, Wildland Security here.
© Mya Thompson
Eric in the river/swamp near the Dzanga camp.
Eric Spaulding
Eric worked for ELP from 2001-2005 as an engineer and researcher. For the 2002 Dzanga expedition, he deployed an array of sound recorders to collect time-synchronized elephant vocalizations. He created and deployed the 'Musthmaster' digital camera array system to capture elephant locations within the Dzanga Bai, and later built a custom database for the team's analysis. Eric has moved on from Cornell, but has many fond memories of Dzanga.

© Josi Demmer
Bruce (center) and Nik (right) with Peter, setting out for field work.
Bruce Thompson and Nik Batruch
Bruce is a professor of physics at Ithaca College. He's also the father of one of ELP's founding members, Mya Thompson. He has had an active interest in ELP ever since Mya started here. Nik was one of Bruce's students when the two of them went with Peter to Gabon in 2007 and provided the expertise for recording seismic activity for the project on the effect of oil exploration on elephant activity (see more here). Nik has now moved on to a career in sound engineering.
Edward in the field, Kakum, Ghana.
Edward Wiafe
Edward has been working in Kakum National Park, Ghana (one of ELPÍs study sites) since 2003. He took a leave of absence to study for an M.Sc. at Freiburg University, Germany. As part of this, he joined us for a summer internship in 2007. He is now back in Kakum NP, working as a Law Enforcement and Protection Officer. He is conducting reseach for his PhD (with Cape Coast University) on the ecology of a primate species in Kakum Conservation Area. ELP is very happy to have Edward as a colleague: we hope to have a long and fruitful relationship with him.

©Melissa Groo
Andrea Turkalo with the Ba'Aka team.
Dzanga Ba'Aka Team
A team of Ba'Aka 'pygmies' provides support to the Elephant Listening Project in the Central African Republic. Their intimate knowledge of the equatorial rainforest and its inhabitants has proven essential to the success of our field efforts.
More on the Ba'aka and their culture (PDF)>>

© Robert MacCurdy
The Elephant Biology and Management team in 2002.
The Elephant Biology and Management Team
The EBM team is a group of African wildlife biologists, funded by Conservation International to specialize in the censusing of forest elephants. The team worked with the Elephant Listening Project in 2000 and 2002 to deploy recording units and carry out simultaneous dung-count surveys.
Our work would be impossible without the dedicated help of a whole bunch of wonderful people who care about what we are trying to do and have worked across the years to help us make it happen. Cornell undergraduates, students from local high schools, and Ithacans who want to be involved.
We have organized this page in reverse chronological order (more or less). If you are one of our former volunteers and we don't have a picture for you, please do send us one (and catch us up on what you are up to).

Viridiana Garcia

Mieke Ruina

Liz Wahid

Angela Lu

Monica Branca

Jen Guerrero

Sage Solomine

Sarah Kim

Simon Fines

Nathalie Lindor

David Singler

Laura Bhola
-Brooks_crop2_180.jpg)
Lizzy Brooks

Becky Higgins

Caitlin Keeney

Catie Davis

Sylvie Finn

Ciara Rodriquez

Marissa Velasquez

Justin Zloty

Jeffrey Arendash

Emily Satinsky

Maya DeBellis

Johnathan Gomez

Chaunte Lewis

Sarina Pacifici

Kate Salesin

Alexa Hilmer

Ben Fleury

Emily Berman

Julia Reagan

Michelle Jang

Jennifer Stevens

Natalie Gonzalez

Robbie Strom

Megan Lee

Rachel Chuang

Natasha Bartolotta

Veronica Kim

Kristina Ceres

Shanna Wade

Allison Huysman

Lucy Keeler

Polly Homberg
.jpg)
Rachel Ruden

Elise Newman

Emily Peck

Julia Gil

Katie Baird

Kate Mattera

Elizabeth McDonald

Sarah Smith

Sophie Trowbridge

Zarah Deutsch

Gabe Lewenstein

Shanna Johnson

Michelle Mathios

Laura Krasnow

Gita Chelluri

Katy Graziano

Bobbi Estabrook

Erin Allen