Attaching collars to elephants that have been anesthetized is dangerous for both the researchers and the elephants, and must be repeated every 2-4 years to replace the batteries in the collars. The initial costs of the GPS collar and the helicopter capture are high and the process requires highly trained staff, but the subsequent costs of collecting the data are low. Data from collars are sometimes lost during transmission because hilly terrain and dense forests interfere with the signal and data must be curated for errors due to technical issues before final analysis.

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