One of my last projects that I worked on with Save the Elephants was the big collaring operation. The collaring of elephants is very important in assisting the long term research and conservation of the Elephants. It helps STE to better understand the movements of elephants, which allows them to establish wildlife corridors. These are safe channels that wildlife can use to travel between different reserves. It also allows the STE staff to better understand human elephant conflict and where is occurs. We had 5 days booked to devote all of the teams time to the collaring operation. We had the KWS vets booked and with us.
The collaring was a huge success the main target elephants being known crop raiders. In total seven cows were collared successfully. There is always a high level of risk with any collaring operation for the elephant involved, the family it belongs to and the people involved. I can happily report that all individual collaring operations went very well, leaving the team and the elephants in perfect health. It was an incredible event to be apart of. My job was record all the details of the whole collaring project for example the time of dart entry, time that the elephant is down, dosage of antidote etc. The team worked so well together with everyone knowing exactly what to do. I feel very honoured and grateful that I was involved in such an important, exciting and useful STE project.
The team placing the collar around the neck of a cow from the Hardwood family. In this collaring the team actually had to lift the cows head to allow the collar to be slipped under her neck, it took 5 very strong people to get her head up only half an inch off the ground.
The collars are held on by screws. An electric drill is used to tighten the bolts around the neck. The collars have a counter weight attached to the bottom of the collar to stop it from twisting around and becoming uncomfortable for the elephant.