Thai elephants fitted with tracking collars in bid to curb conflict

Wildlife officials have launched a project to put tracking collars on elephants in a bid to reduce the risk of conflict with local villagers and farmers near a restricted forest area in eastern Thailand. Dr Pinsak Suraswadi, deputy head of the Department of National Parks Wildlife and Plant Conservation, presided last week over the launch of an exercise to put collars on three elephants in Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary in Chachoengsao district. The dailyReport Must-reads from across Asia – directly to your inbox The first three collars were imported from South Africa with help from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and a global network of researchers linked to the Institute of Science and Conservation, including the Smithsonian Museum in the United States. An elephant waits patiently while a satellite collar is fitted around his neck in Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary, east of Bangkok. Photo: WWF The project aims to study the movement of elephants in order to try to stop them coming into conflict with human populations, especially in areas designated for development and agriculture. The area where the elephants were collared, east of Bangkok, is designated as a “red” area, indicating it has seen a lot of human-elephant conflict. It is a region where marauding elephants have been known to swarm around and ‘hijack’ trucks carrying fruit they like to eat, such as pineapples. It is also close to forest areas where thousands of poachers have been arrested for poaching rare wildlife or timber. A Thai wildlife official holds…

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