Technology to ensure elephants safety

by Novatus Makunga

The Arusha Times

Wildlife researchers in the country have decided to put special collars with transmitters on elephants to simplify tracing their movements and ensure their safety from poachers.

The Director of Elephant Research Centre based at Enduiment in West Kilimanjaro, Longido district, Alfred Kikoti, explained that the special collar on the elephant has satellite communication to be used to monitor the elephant movements after every six hours.

The director said the technology enabled the researchers to locate the animal’s permanent routes and habitats and hence enables them to estimate their sharing of land resources with human population in the localities.

Kikoti said the technology would help to reduce unnecessary elephant-human contacts hence minimise incidences of losses suffered on both sides as well as accidents including loss of human life.

He said the researchers would now easily tell what is happening to the elephant including unsanctioned hunting through the new technology.

The director lamented that elephant poaching for tusks was still in vogue in Tanzania.

An elephant satellite collar costs US Dollars 5,000 equivalent to Tsh.6 million.

On elephant population, Kikoti said West Kilimanjaro boasted of over 450 elephants, permanently located herds, and 200 more of migrating population to and from Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

The Lake Natron basin has some 200,000 elephants and Ngorongoro district houses 150,000 other elephants.

The chairman for environmental maintenance control at Enduiment, Parsanga Lendapa has called on the government to issue them with firearms for use against poachers in the wildlife reserve areas.

Lendapa complained there have been many incidences where the local anti-poaching Maasai scouts have been overpowered by the better armed poachers.

He narrated a success story when he claimed the number of elephants killed by poachers had dropped from 10 to only one or two after the inception of the anti-poaching scouts in the area in 2004.

The acting Enduiment divisional secretary, Tersila Mushi said that West Kilimanjaro ecosystem has now been successfully protected by environmentalists due to its importance to wildlife and the local human population.

Mushi said their efforts have received support from stakeholders such as camp site owners like Kibo Safaris who have been paying US Dollars 300 per month to the anti-poaching scouts.

The elephant day which started to be celebrated in 1996 in Chicago, USA, was celebrated for the first time in Tanzania this year.

The objective being awareness for protection of wildlife starting with biggest land animal - the elephant.

Enhanced wildlife protection activities have been credited for the current increase in elephants in Tanzania whose numbers have more than doubled within twelve years. The protection activities, funded by the Tanzania Wildlife Protection Fund have benefitted the endangered animals, boosting their original populations.