Animal researchers claim the incidents of poachers intercepting signals to track down the animals are under-reported out of fear of being accused of putting animals at risk or lose funding, according to The Times.

Poachers are set to make an enormous amount of money from hunting the animals, some indicating that the illicit wildlife trade is worth around £15 billion ($18.4 billion) a year and rhinoceros horn is being sold for over £50,000 ($61,000) a kilo.

Conservationists are tagging animals with GPS or radio transmitters to help research animal behavior and migration patterns. Transmitters cost between £150 and £4,000, but experts warned that the security standards aren't always adequate.

According to Steven Cooke, of Carleton University in Canada, abuses of GPS tagging often appear in local media, blogs, and websites—but rarely recorded in the scientific literature.