Borneo conservationists use tracking collars to protect endangered elephants

Conservationist Farina Othman and her team, through the NGO Seratu Aatai, are working to protect the endangered Bornean elephant population in Sabah, Malaysia. With only approximately 1,000 of these elephants remaining in the wild, the team is utilizing GPS tracking collars to mitigate growing human-wildlife conflict.

The tracking collars serve a dual purpose: they allow conservationists to alert local villagers when elephants approach human settlements and assist in a broader program to design wildlife corridors. These corridors aim to connect fragmented forest patches currently isolated by oil palm plantations and villages.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Bornean elephants have lost more than 60 percent of their habitat in Sabah over the last 40 years due to logging and the expansion of oil palm cultivation. In the Kinabatangan floodplain, which houses about 160 elephants, only half of the original area remains suitable habitat.