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Four elephants to be de-collared in West Bengal

Special Correspondent

Experiment only partly successful: wildlife authorities

KOLKATA: Authorities of the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and West Bengal's Wildlife Department are planning to de-collar four elephants fastened with global positioning system (GPS) equipment.

One of the objectives of the experiment, the first of its kind in the country, was that the GPS collar would act as an early warning system to reduce elephant-human conflict.

The success rate of the experiment turned was only around 50 per cent, Raman Sukumar, Chairman, CES, told The Hindu over the phone from Bangalore.

Elephant-human conflict

North Bengal was chosen for the experiment — initiated in two phases last year — because of the high level of elephant-human conflict that claimed an average of 50 human lives each year. Also, the authorities wanted to keep track of the movement of the herds to which the four elephants belonged.

Data received through satellite showed that the home range of the elephants were spread across "an amazing" 820 sq.km. covering parts of Assam and Bhutan, said Subrata Pal Chowdhury, technical assistant, wildlife wing.

"The elephants will now have to be re-darted with tranquillisers to enable wildlife personnel to take off the collars, which could be some relief to the animals as each collar weighs about 10 kg," Prof. Sukumar said.

On why the experiment was only partly successful, he said: "The technology started failing whenever there was a heavy cloud cover and heavy rain." He felt the need for working on more mechanically effective collars before they could be fastened onto elephants.

According to Mr. Pal Chowdhury, the GPS collars used in the experiment were "more effective in terrain like that in the African savannahs, having extensive grassland and no dense vegetation, which is not the case in north Bengal... "

The equipment, introduced in a region where the density of elephant population was among the highest (there are about 500 elephants) turned dysfunctional and the experiment was "not as successful as we had hoped."

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