Researchers Use GPS Tracking Collars to Track Wild Buffalo

The Kakadu’s floodplains are being devastated by wild buffalo and they are destroying native fauna and flora as well. However, a new program where GPS tracking collars are being used is set in place to better understand the feral animals’ movements which will help the World Heritage National Park finally stop them.

In Arnhem Land, neighboring Kakadu National Park, there was a 2014 aerial survey of the wild

buffalo which estimated that across 92,000 square kilometers of country there were about 98,000 buffalo.

According to Charles Darwin University’s PhD student and the project’s main researcher, Stewart Pittard, the buffalo are becoming a huge problem.

Benn Bryant, wildlife veterinarian, was brought in to sedate the buffalo while Pittard secured the collars on their necks. The team comes in by helicopter and chases the herd of buffalo until they are able to shoot a tranquilizer dart into one of them. Once shot, the buffalo will collapse in minutes.

While unconscious, which is a brief time, temperature readings and blood will be taken by the wildlife veterinarian along with measures and records of its respiratory rates and heart. While this is happening, Pittard attaches the collar on the neck of the buffalo as the team above in the helicopter keeps an eye out for other dangerous wild animals.

Once the job is finished, Bryant administers an antidote which will reverse the anesthesia which gives Bryant and Pittard 90 seconds to get to safety. The buffalo is up and walking inside a minute.

The team is at risk since they are working with big dangerous animals and extremely potent capture drugs. The environment they are working in is unpredictable as well. Because of these things, this project as to be managed very carefully, according to Bryant.

Female buffalo often weighing about 800 kilograms are targeted through this program since they usually stick with the herd.

The collars that are put on the female buffalo will stay on them for around a year to allow researchers to study their movements which will enable them to develop a strict management strategy for the buffalo in Kakadu.

Anthony Simms, Kakadu’s threatened species manager claims the buffalo destroy the resources the native animals rely on and the places they live. To understand the wild buffalo better, where they range, their impacts and the threats they pose, helps the park to come up with better plans of managing the species and problems.

This $230,000 buffalo GPS tracking projects is funded jointly by Kakadu Management and the Australian Research Council.

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