AR-News: (India) Orissa employes GPS collaring to protect elephants

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India News: Orissa employs GPS collaring to protect elephants 
 20-May-2004 

Bhubaneswar, India : Orissa is to use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to protect the state's elephants that are facing a serious threat from poachers and human encroachments. 

By fitting GPS collars on elephants, experts will be able to track their movements, identify encroachments and monitor the movement of poachers, officials said. 

The initiative is being funded by the central government in Orissa's Mayurbhanj elephant reserve, which includes the Similipal Tiger Reserve. Similipal is the home to about 100 tigers in the wild and about 500 Asian elephants. 

GPS collaring is an improvement over satellite collaring technology, which is also used to track elephants. In the satellite collar, an embedded antenna transmits signals to a satellite, from where images are sent to the earth station in the US. From there, the elephants' movements are sent through e-mails to computers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. 

In the GPS system on the other hand, the elephants can be traced much more quickly - even on mobile phones - and there is no need for e-mails.