We’re delighted to introduce our project, Mobilizing Motus. Motus, a Latin word for movement, is a collaborative wildlife tracking system that uses automated radio telemetry.  Since 2014, a network of close to 2,000 receiver stations has expanded from Atlantic Canada to 34 countries, enabling 2,250 researchers to study more than 45,000 individuals of more than 350 species.  Beyond being a conservation technology, Motus is also a growing network of conservation practitioners connected internationally by the species they track, and the projects that they collaborate on.

One of the primary functions of Motus is as a tool for addressing conservation research questions – things like survival, stopover ecology, population connectivity, and specific site-use.  Our WildLabs project is all about optimizing the data pipeline, from the moment a radio tag signal is picked up by a receiver station, to the delivery of that data point and millions like it to each and every user of this conservation technology.  Specifically, this will involve developing innovative software solutions that will both sustain the rapid growth of system, and ensure that data flow limitations, and database size and complexity, do not present a barrier to practitioners making conservation breakthroughs on the ground. Motus generates billions of data points each year, and our aim is to make these as error-free and effective as possible.

Our team is led by Stu Mackenzie, co-founder of the system, Adam Smith, our US Motus Director, Denis Lepage and Catherine Jardine, Senior Director and Associate Director respectively of the Data Science and Technology hub at Birds Canada, and Lucas Berrigan, Motus Manager of Technology and Web Development.  We are really looking forward to meeting and working with more of the WildLabs community as the project evolves.  We have just launched our new Motus Community forum and welcome your ideas on how we can integrate it with the WildLabs forums, and any suggestions you have for how we might improve. 

We’re super excited that the conservation technology community is becoming more connected through this WildLabs initiative and are very grateful for the opportunity to contribute through this awards program.