India, Nov. 3 -- Satellite collars have transformed wildlife monitoring, allowing forest officials to track animals across vast and often inaccessible landscapes. Contrary to popular belief, however, they do not provide continuous, real-time tracking. Monitoring teams typically depend on periodic location updates and ground searches to find the animals. If a signal fails to transmit, officials may have to wait several hours for the next update, and during that time there is no way to know where the animal is.

At Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, where officials track around 15 cheetahs, the satellite collars are programmed to transmit a location signal once every six hours. A single missed update can therefore leave teams without a f...