[grawprog]

>Probe them and they’ll cart away. “Forest officials in Maharashtra have tried to spy on them, but it was futile,” Dr. Nimbalkar recalls.

[jackvalentine]

Thanks somehow I missed that. Incompetent reading!

Obviously we're not in possession of all the facts here but it sounds like incompetent spying to me. Much more difficult operations are carried out every single day.

[nathanvanfleet]

They might not have had the amount of budget necessary to observe them from a drone for months

[kyriakos]

This and also botanists at universities can easily explain budget expenditures on DNA testing but not on hiring PIs.

[jackvalentine]

A drone seems like overkill.

[gus_massa]

Perhaps they are getting bribes from the street vendors to look the other way, and that reduces they spying abilities.