Radio collars on animals to aid game wardens?

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33101, 16 December 1972, Page 11

Radio collars on animals to aid game wardens?

(By

1 TONY VAN DER WATT}

Collars have become high fashion in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

Lions, zebras, wildebeest, impala and monkeys are all sporting them—and a whole series of other animal species will soon be following suit.

South Africa’s National Parks Board was keen to know more about its animals and their habits, but the problem was how to track a specific animal through thick bush, in sometimes large herds, over long distances, by day and night. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (C.5.1.R.), which has a large research establishment near Pretoria, came to the rescue. Its experts devised small radio transmitters which, powered by batteries and affixed to the animals with collars, send out regular pulses.

Powerful scanners were mounted on four wheel-drive vehicles, to enable the parks board's rangers to keep track of their subjects, and portable direction-finding equipment was built for detailed tracking in areas limited to access by foot.

The game rangers now take these modem devices out into the bush, shoot the animals of their choice with tranquiliser darts launched from crossbows and air-guns, and after the inevitable chase through the bush to keep up with the animal before it drops into a deep sleep, attach the collars. A quick radio test to make sure all is functioning, an antidote injection for some species and another shot to prevent infection, and the animal is set to rejoin its community—a new bleep on the tracking station’s scanner.

Collars for rhinoceroses are out of the question—but nature provides a ready holder in the animal’s “small” horn. This fibre appendage has no sense of feeling, so the game rangers drill a hole through the horn, insert the radio, affix it with resin, administer the antidote—and get well out of the way by the time this animated tank with an aggressive temper wakes up. In most cases the batteries last for about six months. When they fade or the pulses indicate that something is amiss, the animal is darted again, and repairs made. In the cases of animals which move only by day, the radios are equipped with light-sensitive switches to turn off the radios by night and so conserve the batteries. The National Parks Board says it is too early to draw any conclusions from the research already done, but it is convinced that the programme will throw new light on the habits and migrations of the species under test. The C.S.I.R. reports that the radios could also be used to record animals’ body temperatures, blood pressures, pulse rates and other functions. Radio-telemetric equipment is now being developed to do this on horses, rats, mice and vultures.

The game rangers and C.S.I.R. technical men have had some awkward moments during their collaring activities, when drugs have worn off sooner than expected. A couple of lions have woken up prematurely, necessitating some fast leg-work by the men working on them, but no accidents have been reported—either to animals or men.

The collars do not appear to distress the animals, either once they have become accustomed to them, any more than a pet dog bothers about its collar.