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Collaring of animals for research Wildlife biologists and veterinarians have to keep them abreast with the developments in technology. We employ radio collars to study the animal movements. These collars have been very helpful in monitoring animal movements. The data derived from this is applied by the park managers to manage the animals. For example, elephants are known to migrate along corridors and being associated with human-wildlife conflicts. Once the data is downloaded, maps are drawn and it’s easy to explain to anyone how these animals move. A practical example is giving data on poaching. One elephant that had been collared, showed no movements upon downloading of the data, and this raised an alarm, and people were sent to the ground to find out what was happening. Just to find a carcass, with the collar but minus the tusks. This tells the management to boost on security and surveillance in such areas.
This lion moves from Lewa into Samburu. Lions are also involved in conflicts and we put collars in order to track their movements. The rangers are trained on how to use the receivers and report back to office whenever they see or pick signals of the collared animals Collaring of elephants The vet was involved in collaring of 4 elephants in Marsabit National park. The KWS researcher and Save the elephant team employed GSM collars on elephants in order to understand their enviroments. The data collected is very useful for management planning. For example we can easily tell the elaphant migratory corridors buy seeing how these animals move
The terrain in Marsabit is inaccessible using a vehicle hence we darted the animals from a helicopter. Use of a chopper for darting is very expensive, but the value of the data collected outruns the cost.
8 Comments posted on "Collaring of animals for research"
Paul H on May 18th, 2007 at 10:25 am
These are great photos, and indeed this seems to be the start of a great blog. You probably get asked this all the time, but don’t the collars bother the animals? Or prevent them from cleaning themselves properly?
Stephen Chege on May 31st, 2007 at 9:34 am
Thank you for taking your time to look at our blog. It depends on the way people view different things. But from experience the benefits of the data derived from this overiddes the others. A mature elephant is approximately 5-6 tonnes and the weight of the collar is only 12-13kg. In fact its just like the watch you are wearing. About the animal cleaning itself, the collar does not in any way interfere with this. We usually follow-up the animals after collaring and we havent found any abnormal behaviour after collaring the animals.
Simona on June 21st, 2007 at 9:43 am
Hello.. where did you go? I keep checking to see if you are posting but there seems to be silence! Please post!
Ann on August 21st, 2007 at 11:04 am
great blog. please keep it going! is there going to be a huge Transboundary Park, (or Parks) to preserve migration routes, like i keep reading about? thanks,
Ann on August 21st, 2007 at 11:09 am
Steve, these posts are a few months old, not many people are seeing this information.
Wanda on September 13th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Wonderful photos — the work you do is so very important to the world –
Christine C. on October 4th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Stephen – Great blog! I think the collaring initiative is really interesting…do you find that the animals are at all traumatized by the initial darting? I realize that the outcome measures you hope to achieve (i.e. saving the elephants from poachers) probably outweigh some concerns, but I would be interested to hear what behavioral issues you might be observing, if any, of a post-darted and collared animal.
TwetteWassipt on February 15th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
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