Thailand’s wildlife authorities have successfully tracked and tagged a third of the wild elephants at Phu Luang Conservation Area in north-eastern Loei province (near the border with Laos) and fitted a GPS collar that will track the elephant’s activities after many leave their normal surroundings have grazing grounds for food.
The GPS collars are currently being fitted to 5 elephants and 3 have already been fitted, according to Director of the Wildlife Conservation Learning Center of the Ministry of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Supagit Vinitpornsawan.
Each GPS collar weighs around 10 kilograms, or less than 0.2% of an elephant’s body weight. He agreed that some elephants might be “annoyed” once the collars are on and will try to remove them, but eventually they adapt and don’t even notice the GPS collars.
Elephants that leave their natural environment to forage are more likely to damage crops grown by villagers near wildlife sanctuaries or national parks.
“This will lead to conflicts between villagers and wild animals.”
The goal is to tag 67 elephants, but as of 2018, only 11 elephants had a GPS tracker attached.
SOURCE: Thai PBS world | DNP Messages
Comments are closed.