BENGALURU: The Karnataka forest department will track the movement of elephants and alert citizens residing in periphery of forests with the help of indigenously developed radio collars and tracking devices.
Speaking on the sidelines of the launch of these devices in Bengaluru on Wednesday, Forest, Environment, and Ecology Minister Eshwar B Khandre said these indigenously developed GSM-based radio collars will be fitted to the cow elephant leading the herd. This is the first of its kind in India, he said. The tracker called as KP-Tracker has been developed by the forest department and Bengaluru-based Infiction Labs Pvt Ltd.
“This will now reduce the cost of the radio collars. Earlier the department was importing them from African Wildlife Tracking in South Africa and from Vektronic in Germany.
Due to various taxes, the cost of each radio collar was around Rs 6.5 lakh, but now these cost around Rs 1.8 lakh. The time taken to acquire them also will reduce from 6-9 months to 15-20 days.
Their weight also reduces from 16-17 kg to 7 kg,” he said. Forest officials said since they are made in the state, if any defects are found in the radio collars, they can be immediately replaced or repaired.
“Radio collaring elephants helps track their movements. People are informed in advance, and an alert is sounded to ensure there is no conflict. The data is saved on the local servers and is disseminated to the ground staffers and locals using in-house apps,” an official said.