Putting a collar on an elephant is a big deal! You have to immobilize the elephant to do it, and the collar has to be replaced about every seven years. Why bother? The collar has a device that sends a GPS signal to a satellite on a regular schedule.^* The collars “check in” every four hours. The location information is then communicated to a tracking system. Of course elephants often keep moving, so the satellite data is just a start in locating them.

^*Note: Newer collars communicate with towers and are less expensive to maintain than the older collars, but they give the same sort of information.