Hi everyone,
WILDLABS newbie, so please bear with me.
Currently inherited a project focusing on making grazing better managed / more sustainable on a tiny (67 sqkm), very mountainous, remote island in Cabo Verde, for which we need to put GPS collars on goats.
Can anyone please advise on models more commonly used, or guidance on how to select collars?
Thank you
9 March 2022 6:10pm
Hi Sara,
Welcome to WILDLABS! I'm definitely not a tracking expert, but am in the midst of a movement ecology project and have come across two potentially useful papers:
1. Study that used GPS-GSM collars on an Ibex population: http://www.italian-journal-of-mammalogy.it/Individual-activity-interacts-with-climate-and-habitat-features-in-influencing-GPS,77108,0,2.html
2. Paper on using tracking tech to understand behavioral ecology of feral goats in the Hawaiian islands: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bk4j6jb
Hope these help!
Talia
11 March 2022 12:58pm
Hi @SaraTC
A cuppla questions: Is this a 'DIY' type GPS project, where you are looking to build your own collars, or are you more interested in commercially available collars? There's some decent, relatively recent reviews for commercial collars (e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216223).
The DIY space continues to grow and there are some great examples with instructions (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468067217300779).
It probably comes down to the features you are after (e.g. is a 'simple' collar needed that stores data on board and you'll need to retrieve collars in order to get the data, or do you need some sort of remote acces etc.).
Happy to discuss, as I am sure are quite a few of the WILDLABS fam on here.
Cheers,
Rob
18 March 2022 8:43pm
Hi @SaraTC
I am not sure if a solution based on SigFox could be implemented in Cabo Verde. In Spain, the most common collar used for livestock is Digitanimal (SigFox or GSM).
In the Canary Islands, there is SigFox coverage, but no Cabo Verde (needed to check)
I am sending you the pack containing the antenna and 20 GPS for goats for 3.144,79€ (VAT included).
https://digitanimal.com/product/pack-coverage/?lang=en
It may be a solution to explore.
Good luck!
19 March 2022 7:34am
Thanks for sharing @antonab and looks like Digitalanimal have some interesting wildlife-specific solutions too: https://digitanimal.com/animal-wildlife/?lang=en
I hadn't heard of them before, so again, cheers for passing their information along.
Rob
Talia Speaker