Assam To Radio-Collar Elephants, Rid Masses of Depredations

GUWAHATI: Assam can now monitor movements of elephants even in remote and geographically challenged areas.

The State Forest department has become the first in the north-eastern region to radio-collar an elephant and planned to fit such device in hundreds of jumbos in future.

Radio-collaring an elephant helps to monitor its movements remotely.

The Forest department had successfully radio-collared a wild elephant in Narangi in the city on May 22 under the leadership of Chief Wildlife Warden Ranjana Gupta. Gupta had constituted a team to take up radio collaring. The elephant movement was later successfully tracked on a mobile app.

Assam has become the fourth State after Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Bengal to radio collar elephants.

Radio collar is a lightweight belt fixed on an elephant’s neck. The device is fitted with a GPS device and the data is relayed on a computer or mobile app real time. The real time monitoring of data helps in early warning whenever the elephant is in the vicinity of a human settlement.

“Apart from this, we can understand the movement of the species based on radio collar. More elephants will be collared in the near future,” a Forest department official said.

Forest Minister Parimal Suklabaidya named the radio collared elephant in Guwahati as Sri Ganesh.

“The radio collar will help in tracking the animal’s movement and preventing it from entering human habitations and causing loss of crops and lives. The man-elephant conflict which is rising alarmingly could be prevented to a large extent through such gadget (radio-collar),” an official said.

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