Guwahati, Jan 7: A female elephant, aged about 30 years, was successfully radio-collared yesterday in Daranga Reserve Forest, located at the foothills of Bhutan Himalayas, under Kumarikata Range of Baksa Forest Division, under Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) of Assam with active support from district administration and police of adjacent Tamulpur district.
It is a collaborative project of Assam Forest Department with the premier biodiversity conservation organization Aaranyak (www.aaranyak.org) to track the movement and habitat use pattern of elephants in the Manas Landscape.
The radio collaring operation was conducted under the leadership of Dr. C. Ramesh, Field Director of Manas Tiger Reserve. The Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Baksa Pradip Bhuyan supervised the operation.
The elephant was tranquilized by a team of expert veterinarians with the help of forest officials and biologists working at ground zero.
The collaring team consisted of veterinarians Dr. Prabhat Basumatary, Dr. Bhaskar Choudhary and Dr. Debabrata Phukan; elephant expert Kaushik Barua; technical expert Priyo Kanta Borbora from Assam State Zoo, Sunil Teron; Aaranyak’s biologists Abhijit Boruah, Anushka Saikia and Aaranyak’s team members Dibakar Nayak, Dipankar Haloi, Rangjalu Basumatary, Didom Basumatary and Rupam Goyari.
The logistics and the on-ground execution of the operation were efficiently managed by Hiten Kumar Baishya, Deputy Head of Aaranyak’s Elephant Conservation and Research Division (ERCD).
The operation, which was supported by the SBI Foundation and Prof. Curtis Griffin of the University of Massachusetts, USA, was facilitated by Aaranyak.
The Baksa Forest Division team’s support and proactive assistance from the civil and police administrations of the Tamulpur district enabled the successful execution of this operation.
“GPS-based satellite-radio telemetry will provide crucial information into the movement patterns, critical linkages, habitat preferences, and ranging behaviour of the wild elephant in the landscape. The location data from the collar will contribute to the long-term management of human-elephant conflict in the landscape,” said Hiten Baishya.
“The basic objective of radio collaring of wild elephants is to determine the elephant occupancy within an area or range. This helps us to better manage human-elephant conflict and facilitate elephant conservation,” said Dr Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar, the Head of ERCD, Aaranyak.
This marks the second radio collaring of wild elephants in Baksa Forest Division. The first such collaring was carried out on a tusker on November 18, 2024.