Evaluating Scholarly Sources: Elephant Populations

With the help of JSTOR, an online scholarly database, I have found two articles about elephant populations and hunting impacts that I will analyze here.

Ossanna, Lia. "Screenshot of JSTOR Search."
9/3/15 via http://www.jstor.org/action/showAdvancedSearch

HUMAN ECOLOGY ARTICLE

The first article I found was from Human Ecology, titled "The Impact of West African Trade on the Distribution and Elephant Populations (Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, 19th-20th Century)."  The purpose of this article is to report on the findings of how human processes like trade affect natural ecosystems, specifically those of elephants and chimpanzees.  As the title suggests, the article covers narratives from early colonization to the present, while field work lasted from 2003 to 2012.

The article was published by Springer, an international company that publishes books and journals covering the topics of technology, medicine, and science.  Human Ecology (including the issue with this article) is available in both print and online.

The author cites 77 references in total, all of which are other articles and studies about chimpanzees and elephants in the regions specified in the article.

Vincent Leblan wrote this article.  He is a French researcher with a background in environmental science.  He has published other articles, mostly about primates.

The intended audience is people who have followed similar studies and are interested in chimpanzees, and African ecology and environmental science.  Presumably the audience will be from the academic sphere.  A significant part of the audience are people who will use this article as a reference for their own scholarly works.

I found this article through JSTOR.  Although the actual article was not available through JSTOR, it was accessible through the UA Library.



THE JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT ARTICLE

The second article I found was from The Journal of Wildlife Management, titled "Sustainability of Elephant Hunting Across International Borders in Southern Africa: a Case Study of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area."  The purpose of this article was to discuss how elephant hunting is not sustainable and creates a decline in elephant population, based on their research and surveys.  This article included analysis of hunting quotas, as well as projections of future elephant populations given current trends.

The article was published by Wiley, which is an online research library.  Wiley was publishing the article on behalf of the Wildlife Society, a large conservation organization.  The Journal of Wildlife Management is published online.

This article cites 81 sources, and similar to the first article and all scholarly articles, the sources are books, articles, and studies relevant to the topic of elephant hunting and population in the Greater Mapungubwe area.

This article had four authors: Sarah-Anne Selier, Bruce Page, Abi Vanak and Rob Slotow. Selier works at the South African National Biodiversity Institute and has published other writings on African Elephants.  Page does lecture, research and consulting at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.  Abi is an associate professor at Suri Sehgal Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation.  Slotow is the head of the College of Health Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and has published 183 papers.

Again, similar to the first article, the intended audience is those who are interested in elephant populations and hunting impacts, who have an academic background, as well as those who will use this paper as a reference for their own research.

I found this article through JSTOR as well.  Again, this article was not available through JSTOR itself, but it was available through Wiley Online Library.