Jake Wall, a PhD geography student at the University of British Columbia, helps outfit an elephant with a satellite GPS tracking collar in northern Kenya in a handout photo. We see Mr. Wall in a dark blue shirt and jeans hunched down administering something toward the back of an elephant, who is lying on its right side. In the forefront of the photo we see the elephant's enormous tusks that frame Mr. Wall. In the background is a high blue sky with scattered white clouds above a field of long grass that appears to be quite dry.

Jake Wall, a PhD geography student at the University of British Columbia, helps outfit an elephant with a satellite GPS tracking collar in northern Kenya in a handout photo.
Photo Credit: Canadian Press / HO-Jake Wall

Endangered elephants get help from BC students

A group of students in British Columbia has created a hi-tech system that is providing park rangers with a new tool to save threatened African elephants.

PhD candidate Jake Wall and his colleagues at the conservation group Save the Elephants designed a system that beams live satellite data and alerts rangers to poaching and to elephants in distress.

So far, about 100 elephants have been outfitted with satellite-tracking collars that let rangers monitor the animals live on Google Earth.

The system alerts rangers to changes in behaviour that might indicate an elephant is in distress or has fallen prey to poachers in pursuit of the elephants’ ivory tusks.

Mr. Wall says the system has already allowed the team to treat injured elephants and exposed poaching incidents.

According to The Nature Conservancy, an environmental group, poaching for ivory has reached record levels. It says tens of thousands of elephants are being killed for their tusks every year.

Time Magazine reported earlier this month that Nigeria and Angola sell the greatest amount of ivory products in Africa

It says the price African ivory brings in China has tripled in the past four years. That has resulted in dissident militias and organized-crime groups that monopolize the trade to ramping up illicit poaching.

Categories: Economy, Environment & Animal Life, International
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