Myanmar-U.S. team studies elephants

Myanmar-U.S. team studies elephants

MYANMAR: A joint Myanmar-U.S. wildlife conservation team has
attached data-emitting collars to three wild elephants in
Myanmar's mountain ranges to survey populations of the beasts, a
semiofficial newspaper said on Sunday.

The team last month attached the collars to the three
elephants -- two females and a teenage male -- to track their
movements in the Bago Yoma mountain ranges north of the capital
Yangon, where people have had encounters with the animals, the
Myanmar Times reported.

A Global Positioning System device in the collars transmits
the precise locations of the giant mammals to a satellite, which
forwards the data to a ground station.

Dan Kelly, an ecologist from the U.S.-based Smithsonian
National Zoological park and one of the team's leaders, said the
devices have already sent valuable information about the
elephants' seasonal movements, their impact on human settlements
and their preferred habitat.

It was the second time such collars have been fitted to
elephants in Myanmar after an earlier project in central
Myanmar's Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park in 2002. -- AP