Team Rescues Elephant from Kenya Locals with the Aid of GPS Tracker

But for the GPS collared on Mountain Bull, one of the few fast disappearing elephants in the

Kenya's Samburu National Reserve, the animal would have gone been killed by the villagers who battle for spaces with these wild lives that are alleged to have caused great damages to their farmlands, homes and even their lives.

The elephant had absconded from his reserve home and astray to the near-by village in search for food that happened to be the villagers' only means of livelihood. Action such has this has sent uncountable elephants to their "early grave" and the animals were fast going into extinct but for the timely intervention of a conservation research group based outside Kenya's Samburu National Reserve named Save the Elephants.

This group is founded in order to find ways to let elephants better coexist with people across Africa especially those living far inside the jungles. The researchers track these elephants' whereabouts both for science and for salvation by attaching GPS to collars around their necks.

According to Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a biologist working with the research group, "We were surprised to hear he had been out with the crop raiders. We knew he usually stayed in safe places. He must have been taken in by some bad friends that night. His life was saved by our radio tracking data."

The team, with tracking software help from the Environmental Studies Research Institute of Redlands, Calif., hopes to spread such lessons across Africa, with similar projects underway in Mali, Gabon and South Africa. "Animal tracking is nothing new but we've really pushed the technology," says Douglas-Hamilton. Plotting elephant travels on Google Maps allows the researchers to follow their charges for years. In particular, tracking has revealed "streaking" undertaken by elephants, long straight-line treks from reserve to reserve sometimes covering dozens of miles in a few days. Preserving these corridors is a key requirement for elephant survival, Douglas-Hamilton suggests, much like corridors for wildlife in the American West. "I gave a talk in Montana on corridors and everyone nodded along and said it was just the same with the grizzlies from Canada," he says.