October 12th, 2008
Text messages save elephants' lives, villagers' crops
As elephants’ habitat is destroyed, the great beasts frequently leave their protected reserves, barging into villages and eventually are killed by rangers. But in Kenya, there is a better way: text messaging.
A group called Save the Elephants has outfitted a huge bull elephant named Kimani with a text-messaging collar that alerts rangers whenever he crosses the boundary of the Ol Pejeta conservatory, AP reports.
They placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani’s collar, then set up a virtual “geofence” using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory’s boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers.
They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began. Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer’s field four months ago.
The project not only saves the elephants, it protects nearby families and villages from economic devastation and loss of life.
Batian Craig, the conservation and security manager at the 90,000 acre Ol Pejeta conservancy, says community development programs are of little use if farmers don’t have crops. He recalled the time when 15 families had their harvests wiped out.
“As soon as a farmer has lost his livelihood for six months, he doesn’t give a damn whether he has a school or a road or water or whatever,” he said.
Save the Elephants has partnered with Google Earth to enable tracking of the elephants with GPS collars. So far, 80 beasts have been collared.
