Anna and her herd are now monitored via a GPS collar on another adult female elephant in the herd named Mutiara. She is part of Anna’s core family group. Our rangers continued to monitor the elephant herds directly in the field and inspected their surroundings closely in order to detect threats such as poison and chemicals either set out on purpose or accidently left behind and poaching.
The herds of Mutiara, Cinta and Indah continued to roam - occasionally as one big herd of over 70 elephants - south of the WKS corridor road in the vicinity of Semambu, Sekalo and Suo-Suo village. Conflict was abundant, and the continuous presence of our rangers was imperative to keep the elephants safe.
In July, the team undertook a strenuous field operation that took almost the entire month. Three monitored Sumatran elephants had their old GPS collars replaced and Anna had her collar removed. Anna’s collar had not been working for some time and she was becoming increasingly difficult to dart in order to recollar her.
Key personnel included IEP Veterinarian Dr. Christopher Stremme, senior Mahout Nazaruddin, and forest police officers of BKSDA Jambi. As all the female elephants were joining into a huge group at the time of the field operation, it was a challenge for sniper Nazaruddin to get close to target elephants, and then to differentiate between them. Anna’s GPS collar was taken off at approximately 2am on 11 July 2019. She recovered well from the sedation and rejoined her herd.
