The tusker was fitted with a GPS-enabled radio collar but forest officials involved in the capture said that the elephant was untraceable.
On Thursday, forest officials in Bandipur Tiger Reserve were faced with a tough operation - to capture an elephant which had attacked two residents of a village on the periphery of the tiger reserve. The elephant was fitted with a GPS-enabled radio collar just a month ago but forest officials involved in the capture said that the elephant was untraceable on Thursday. "The collar was not working. We are unsure why this happened. Whether the battery was not working or whether it was not transmitting the location because of a technical defect," says T Balachandra, Conservator of Forests and Field Director, Project Tiger, Bandipur. Eventually, forest officials had to resort to the traditional method of alerting local residents about the tusker. "We decided to circulate the photograph of the elephant on TV channels and newspapers and sent it to each village panchayat in the area. On Thursday morning, a few residents informed us that the elephant is in a farm near Gundlupet," explains Balachandra. The elephant was soon tracked and a team of four trained elephants was used to get close to it. The wild elephant was then bound with thick ropes and led to a truck and shifted to the elephant camp at Dubare in Kodagu. The capture of the elephant sparked a fresh debate on the use of GPS-enabled radio collars on elephants. Elephant captured in Bandipur What is a radio collar? The GPS-enabled radio collar is an electronic device with a radio telemetric transmitter which acquires the GPS position and sends it to a local server. The GPS-enabled collars will update the location of a herd and help forest officials track them even during migration. They are powered by a lithium battery and weigh as much as 10 kg, a fraction of the body weight of an elephant. Earlier this year, the Karnataka Forest Department fitted GPS-enabled collars on wild elephants as an experiment to track their movement and potentially reduce human-elephant conflict. The radio collar on the captured elephant was however fitted by forest officials in Tamil Nadu's Mudumalai reserve. The elephant had strayed from Mudumalai to the periphery of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve. Elephant fitted with a GPS-enabled radio collar 'Collars are not foolproof' "The collars are not foolproof solutions to track elephants. It is a machine that is susceptible to damage based on what the elephant does. If some part is not working, it has to be rectified but usually, it is difficult to do that. This is what happened with the recent case in Bandipur," adds Balachandra. Placing the collar on the elephant is a task that requires meticulous planning. First, trained elephants are used to familiarise themselves with elephants in a herd. Then the female leader, usually the largest and strongest elephant in a herd, is identified. Experts give her a dosage of a tranquillising drug when she is isolated. The dosage depends on the strength of the elephant. When the elephant falls asleep, the collar is fitted on the elephant. Identifying the female leader of the herd allows forest officials to track the herd since the elephant kingdom is matriarchal. The experiment with radio collars might have its detractors but forest officials in Kodagu's Virajpet taluk say that it has been beneficial to them in stopping human-elephant conflicts in the region. "There are practical difficulties but it allows us to find out where elephants are and monitor them easily. This allows rapid response teams to reach faster than before," says Gopal, a forest officer in the Virajpet range. Forest officials in Kodagu Human-elephant conflict Elephant-human conflict is common whenever elephants stray into the agricultural fields of farmers. The conflict has led to loss of both human and elephant lives in Karnataka. Forest officials say that the lack of water in the forest is forcing elephants to turn up in coffee plantations and paddy fields to quench their thirst. In the last few years, forest officials have tried to set up solar fencing that gives a mild jolt, iron fencing, spike pillars and digging trenches, to reduce human-elephant conflict particularly in Kodagu. "They (radio collars) have not reduced instances of elephant-human conflict but have allowed us to respond faster to defuse situations,” says Gopal. "We need to communicate with local residents effectively to reduce the instances of conflict," he adds. Conservationist Joseph Hoover says that in addition to attaching a radio collar, forest officials should regularly keep a check on whether the device is transmitting the location. "There should be coordination between the forest departments of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu because Nilgiris is situated in a tri-junction area," he says.
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