Bengaluru: Elephants roam around Kodagu, Chikkamagaluru and Hassan, and the locals will be informed about the elephant movement by fitting indigenously made radio collars to female elephants, which usually lead the group, said Forest, Ecology and Environment Minister Eshwar B Khandre.

He was speaking after inaugurating the cost-effective Karnataka-tested detection device (KP Tracker) developed by the Karnataka Forest Department in collaboration with Bengaluru’s Infection Labs Private Limited at Aranya Bhavan on Wednesday by handing over the radio collars to the officials of Bandipur and Nagarhole Tiger Reserves.

With 6395 elephants, Karnataka leads the country in the number of elephants. But since the forest area is not increasing in line with the number of elephants, elephant-human conflict is increasing. He said that the government is trying to provide information to the locals by installing radio collars for elephants to save precious lives.

Till now, these radio collars were imported from African Wildlife Tracking of South Africa and Vektronic of Germany. At that time, these radio collars were not available, and a radio collar cost Rs 6.5 lakh. But now a domestically developed radio collar costs Rs 1.80 lakh. This will not only make more radio collars available, but will also reduce foreign dependence and high costs, and save foreign exchange, he said. In addition, the weight of imported radio collars used to be 16 to 17 kg. But now the domestically developed collar weighs only 7 kg, which is lighter, he said.

Eco-friendly radio collar

The Forest Department has manufactured this radio collar according to its needs and using eco-friendly raw materials, which will not pose a threat to wildlife or the environment.

If a defect is found in the radio collars, there is an opportunity to repair them, change the battery, bulb, circuit.

But this opportunity was not available in imported radio collars, he said.

Safety and community empowerment

There was a risk of information leakage of our forest and wildlife from radio collars that were imported from abroad.

Now that this radio collar has been developed domestically, there is no such risk. The data will also be safe on local servers, explained Eshwar Khandre. In the first phase, only the elephant radio collar is ready.

The development of tiger and leopard collars is also in progress and will be released soon, informed Eshwar Khandre.

Introduction to domestic elephant collars:

Kumar Pushkar, Additional Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) of the Karnataka Forest Department, and Gurudeep, a technical expert from Infection Labs Private Limited, have developed a domestic GSM-based elephant radio collar. This collar is named as Karnataka Researched Tracker or Karnataka Produced (KP Tracker). Chief Principal Conservator of Forests Subhash Malkade, APCCF Kumar Pushkar and Ajit Ray were present on the occasion.