How Satellite Technology is Revolutionizing Elephant Conservation
4 October 2024This post comes to PBS Nature from World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Views and opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of THIRTEEN Productions LLC/The WNET Group.
Technology has revolutionized every aspect of our lives, from how we interact with each other to how we understand the world around us. This fast-moving sector has also made its way into conservation work. From the lab to the field, conservation technology is proving invaluable to how we develop and apply conservation strategies.
My recent work focuses on studying elephants in one of world’s largest conservation landscapes, the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier conservation area (“KAZA”). Located in southern Africa, KAZA spans more than 200,000 square miles (about twice the area of Arizona) across five countries including Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. As an expansive landscape with a variety of land uses ranging from protected areas to game reserves to human settlements, this region exemplifies the delicate balance between human needs and wildlife preservation. Its diverse ecosystems—savannahs, forests, and wetlands—host about 227,000 savannah elephants, roughly half of Africa’s remaining population, alongside 3 million people.

© Robin Naidoo / WWF
In our recently published study on how elephants move through different areas, we gained insight into how we can better protect them and the key resources they rely on, like water, more effectively. This idea, known as landscape connectivity, measures how easily animals move between essential areas and is a crucial concept for policymakers and researchers developing conservation strategies.
In the past, understanding how animals move through a vast region like KAZA was extremely challenging. However, GPS collaring has revolutionized our ability to do this, giving us more accurate and useful information. This technology allows us to map elephant movements across entire ecosystems, providing valuable data for conservation efforts.
Resembling a dog collar (a very large one in the case of elephants!), GPS collars record an animal’s location and transmit it to a website in near real-time via arrays of satellites. While GPS collars are not harmful to elephants, attaching them is hard work and can be perilous for the scientists involved. To attach the collars, elephants must first be anesthetized by scientists with a dart. Once the elephant is asleep, we secure the collar around the elephant’s neck as quickly as possible. This is no easy task, given that we are maneuvering an animal that can weigh up to 7 tons! The elephant eventually wakes up completely fine but sporting a new high-tech necklace. It’s a tricky process, but it gives us valuable information about these amazing animals.
From 2009 to 2023, various governments and conservation groups independently collared nearly 300 elephants across KAZA. In 2016, an extensive collaboration united these researchers and field experts who agreed to compile and analyze the data together. That collaboration culminated in the creation of an unprecedented elephant tracking database containing an impressive collection of approximately 4 million GPS data points, making it the most comprehensive of its kind. Using this extensive dataset, we have thoroughly analyzed elephant movement patterns throughout the KAZA landscape, leading to the discovery of vital information for effective conservation management.

© Robin Naidoo / WWF
We discovered that key areas for elephant movements vary across KAZA and that human activities often affect their movements. On a local level, elephants use small, relatively narrow paths to find water, but they must navigate around and through human-made obstacles like fences, farms, and towns. When moving between KAZA’s core protected areas, elephants are sometimes funneled into specific routes due to human settlements, although in other areas they have space to disperse more widely between parks. Lastly, we were able to identify crucial patterns in elephant movement throughout the entirety of KAZA, allowing us to pinpoint small pieces of land that are key connecting hubs for long-range movements.
Our study sheds light on how elephants move across the KAZA region and the challenges they face, offering crucial insights for conservation policy and management. Looking ahead, we hope to extend this type of analysis to GPS tracking data from other species like cheetahs, hyenas, and lions. By analyzing movement data from multiple species, we can develop more comprehensive and effective strategies for managing the KAZA region. WWF scientists are also testing new wireless tracking collars that are lighter, longer lasting, and provide more frequent position updates than traditional GPS collars and at lower cost. This technology has the potential to revolutionize elephant movement studies and could be applied to other wildlife species as well.
As our world continues to rapidly change due to factors like climate change and population growth, humans and wildlife will have to coexist closer together. This makes understanding the way animals utilize shared landscapes even more important. Luckily, new technology continues to evolve and can help us tackle these big problems.
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