(Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe plans to collar and track the movement of dominant female elephants at a national park the size of Connecticut in a bid to lessen the conflict between the world’s second-biggest population of the pachyderms and rural farmers.
The program, which the country’s national parks body is conducting together with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, is designed to get an idea of how herds of the giant mammals move in and out of the park, destroying crops and endangering people.
About half of Zimbabwe’s 100,000 elephants, a number second only to neighboring Botswana, live in and around the Hwange National Park in the north-west of the country. Herds are led by a matriarch, or dominant female, so by collaring eight of them the program will be able to ascertain the movements of as many herds.
“Elephants will be fitted with satellite-enabled GPS collars to study how the mega-herbivores are utilizing the human dominated landscape,” IFAW and Zimparks said in a statement.
Earlier this month, state media reported that elephants wandering into villages near the park at night have imposed an unofficial curfew for residents.
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