Collaring Carnivores: Understanding this key research tool

By Amy Dickman and Alayne Cotterill

Placing satellite collars on large carnivores is one of the most common monitoring and research methods used by conservation scientists, but it also often generates substantial debate, confusion and questions. Here, we explain why we at Lion Landscapes collar lions and other large carnivores, and answer some of the key questions we hear about their use. 

1. What are satellite collars and how do they work?

Satellite collars take regular GPS positions on a pre-programmed schedule, enabling us to track carnivore movements without getting close to them. In addition, if the animal moves past a pre-determined location or boundary, also known as ‘virtual fences’, the collars can be programmed to change the frequency of locations, or to send alerts. One example of this use case is collars alerting us when a lion moves into areas where it is at high risk of conflict, allowing teams to respond before conflict occurs.  

2. Why do we collar large carnivores?

Although people often think of carnivores as just living within protected areas, in reality, they often rely heavily on human-dominated land beyond such areas. In these human-dominated sites, much of our understanding about carnivore behaviour, threats and needs has come from collar data. What we learn from collars also feeds back into our conservation programmes, and helps evaluate them - for example, if we do an intervention, how does it impact carnivores' use of the landscape? Therefore, our reasons for collaring animals largely fall into two somewhat overlapping categories: ecological research and improving coexistence.

Ecological research

Carnivores that live among people are adept at avoiding humans. Lion Landscapes works on some of the most important carnivore populations in Africa but the dynamics of these populations are often very poorly known. Collars provide vital insights into the ranging behaviours of large carnivores and can provide insights into levels and causes of mortality, helping us understand key conservation threats. Understanding movement patterns also helps us understand likely hotspots of carnivore presence, and how this overlaps with human and livestock presence. This is where it overlaps with our coexistence work, as detailed below.

Improving coexistence

People killing carnivores either to prevent or retaliate for attacks on livestock is one of the main threats to large carnivores in the areas where we work. Collaring helps us both to proactively manage current human-carnivore conflict, and to collect data that will help us to better manage such conflict in the future.

Where collared carnivores are located or likely to be present, livestock keepers can avoid those areas, or increase vigilance and protective measures. When used alongside other livestock protection measures, monitoring with collars can significantly reduce the numbers of livestock killed by carnivores, protecting local livelihoods and improving people’s willingness to coexist with predators. This is particularly effective when collaring efforts are focused on carnivores that have been known to kill livestock. The collars are not a solution alone - livestock owners have to be kept abreast of the carnivore movement data and have the support they need to take appropriate action, which is why our networks of trained Lion Extension Officers, and wider trusted relationships between the project and local people, are an essential part of the solution.

Collars can also strengthen relationships between local people and carnivores - people start to see animals as individuals with habits, preferences and struggles of their own. We have seen hardened lion killers become ardent defenders of collared lions after watching their movements and seeing where they raise cubs, and generally getting to know them.

3. Does collaring harm or pose a significant risk to the animal concerned? 

Collaring involves anaesthesia, which involves risk, including a very small risk of death. Darting involves some level of physical stress and harm, and there is also some risk of having an animal wearing a foreign object, which may catch on trees or get stuck in the lower jaw of the animal. Although serious harm or death is very unlikely, we as researchers take all these kinds of risks extremely seriously, and do everything possible to avoid them. We undergo stringent ethical review before collaring is permitted, use well-trained staff and experienced vets throughout the handling, and carefully monitor the animal during and after collaring and recovery. 

These extremely careful procedures clearly lower risks - during our collective lifetime experience, spanning several decades and collaring several hundreds of large carnivores, we have experienced less than five incidents where a large carnivore has either died, or been in a serious situation requiring active intervention, due to darting or collaring. That’s not to undermine the seriousness of those rare events - the whole team finds it extremely distressing when an animal dies or is injured during or after collaring, and we take lots of time to review what happened and assess how we can reduce anything similar happening in the future. We always take proactive steps to reduce the chances of bad outcomes, and problems can be often quickly detected and resolved - for example, if a collared animal shows a lack of movement, or unusual behaviour, teams can follow up on it to conduct a visual assessment, and then have the collar drop off remotely if needed, or in the worst-case scenario, dart the animal again. 

It is also important to balance the real but small risks of collaring with the benefits it can deliver for large carnivores as well as people. As described above, collaring an animal can reduce the risk of it coming into serious conflict with people, and limit the chance of it suffering a long-drawn out death through poisoning or spearing. Understanding large carnivore dynamics and the threats they face can help drive effective conservation action, reducing harm to far more animals than just the collared few. 

4. Does wearing a collar make an animal less wild, or change its behaviour? 

It is natural for many people to see a collar and think that the animal wearing the collar looks less wild, because collars are a symbol of ownership in our modern pet-owning world. However, the opposite is more normally true with wild animals. Collars are a key conservation tool for animals in large open systems and are not as necessary in smaller fenced reserves. Collars allow remote tracking and sensing, giving us a window into a wild animal’s movements and behaviour without being disturbed by the physical presence of research scientists. 

A collared animal is every bit as wild as an uncollared animal in the same population. However, in some cases, collared animals and their group can become more habituated to human presence than uncollared animals if collars are used to aid physical observation of the animal, either to collect more research data or to check the health of the collared animal and the condition and fit of the collar itself. This kind of habituation is no different to animals exposed to regular photographic tourism, which also become habituated and are less likely to run from the presence of tourist vehicles. 

A well-fitted collar leaves no visible gaps between the neck and the collar, to prevent it becoming caught on branches or other objects, and to prevent the carnivore getting its bottom jaw stuck in the collar, which could be deadly. A large carnivore's neck is often narrow behind the head, and a common concern is that the collar is too tight when it is fitted correctly. Collars can look bulky (though they are very light compared to the carnivore) and unnatural, so people also often express concern that the collar may impact the natural life of the animal wearing it. That is definitely not the case from our experience - many of our collared animals wear collars for most of their adult lives and thrive. We monitor collared animals much more closely than uncollared ones, so we have much less data on the latter, but collared animals don’t appear to behave any differently to uncollared animals, and carry out all normal activities such as breeding and hunting. Indeed, where collars help reduce conflict, an animal's life expectancy and breeding potential may be substantially improved by wearing a collar.

5. Why don’t collars save every animal wearing them?

There are good reasons why we collar animals, and those may lead to reductions in conflict risk as above, but we do not collar animals in order to directly intervene in preventing other deaths. For example, hunting tourism occurs in the Tanzanian landscapes we work in, and we understand that is legitimate, chosen land use in those areas. If a collared animal moves into a trophy hunting zone, we would not intervene - those areas often represent important habitat, so movement there is part of its natural ranging pattern, and it is beyond our remit as researchers to intervene in any way. We monitor their movement, and if an animal is killed, we would receive a mortality alert and aim to follow up and establish the cause of death. 

This may seem counterintuitive - if we can use collars to alert us of when a carnivore is likely to come into conflict with people, and act then to prevent conflict, why don’t we do the same to avert possible killings when carnivores enter hunting zones? It is because there are crucial differences between conflict killings and trophy hunting killings - the former are often done using illegal means (e.g. poison) and the conflict carries major risks for local people, while the latter are legally permitted and can benefit both people and wildlife, by providing another source of economic revenue from wildlife presence.

People (including hunters) often feel that collared animals should not be trophy hunted - but as researchers, we would far rather they were treated just as any other animal, as if the collar were invisible. Avoiding shooting an animal simply because it has a collar on means that the data on causes of death becomes biased, undermining one of the central reasons for using them. If a carnivore is trophy hunted, all we would want is for the collar to be returned, so it could be placed on another animal. We don’t blame the hunters, any more than we blame someone who has killed a carnivore in conflict - our aim as researchers is to collect unbiased data and our role as conservationists is to reduce real threats to large carnivore populations. To do this, we need to engage positively with all stakeholders, building the trust and relationships which are vital for long-term, joined-up conservation.    

However, although collaring may not protect that individual, mortality data is key for understanding the level of different threats, so it could reveal if trophy hunting did indeed seem to be an issue. This was seen in Zimbabwe, when collaring data was key to highlighting unsustainable levels of trophy hunting, which led to a moratorium and then a reduction of the quota so that threat was reduced. This is a clear example of how collaring can play a key role in informing more effective, evidence-led wildlife management and conservation. 

6. Can collaring negatively impact tourism? 

Images of animals without collars are normally valued more highly by tourists, professional photographers and their clients than images of collared animals, so people worry that collaring could harm photo-tourism in an area. However, in our experience, it is clear that when tourists and guides are properly informed about why collaring is done, they quickly come to appreciate the role of collars and start seeing collared animals as the fascinating, important ambassadors for their uncollared brethren that they are.

Collaring is also often feared from a hunting tourism perspective, but for different reasons. Incidents of hunting collared animals has led to intense media pressure and backlash (as was seen with ‘Cecil’ the lion in Zimbabwe), so hunters often prefer not to have collars on animals which could be killed, to avoid that risk. There is often distrust between hunters and NGOs performing collaring, but we are keen to work with all stakeholders in a landscape, and want to have open, transparent dialogue and understanding. We don’t want our collaring to undermine any of the legal wildlife-based land uses in the areas where we work, including both photo-tourism and hunting tourism, and want instead for photo-tourists, guides, hunters, operators and other stakeholders to understand and recognise the far-reaching benefits that collaring can deliver.  

7. Are there alternatives to collaring?

People often ask if we could use something else, such as an implant placed within the animal’s body, rather than an external collar. However, that would still involve the same kind of capture and intervention that collaring does, and placing the device internally would be even more invasive and would be likely to risk other harms. There is simply no other tool available at present that offers the detailed level of tracking that collaring does.

That’s not to say that better alternatives won’t emerge in the future. Advances in technology mean that collaring is likely to become less and less crucial - increasingly, wild animals can be detected and tracked without any physical interaction at all. For example, acoustic monitoring can now be used not only to record wild animal presence, but also to count how many individual lions or leopards have been detected. Similarly, technological advances now mean that individual animals can often be identified through camera-traps, providing invaluable information on population size and animal movement.

These kinds of advances are exciting and we are already working with collaborators to see how we can best use them for our monitoring and conservation work - in an ideal world, we could get all the information needed without any animal handling - but they cannot yet provide the detailed movement and behavioural data, and early warning capacity we currently receive from collars. We consider collaring carefully, make it as safe as possible, but for now, it remains an important part of our research and conservation work.