Wildlife tracking technologies have already massively advanced our understanding of the natural world, from uncovering previously mysterious migration patterns and key movement corridors to demonstrating the impacts of anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Recent advances in the development of technologies for collecting and transmitting biologging data have unlocked the potential for fine-scale data collection at a near-global scale, which when integrated with remotely sensed environmental data offers an unprecedented biological lens into ecosystem health and environmental change (Jetz et al. 2022).
New technologies on the horizon include small satellites like CubeSats, which are being investigated by NASA, the ICARUS Initiative's satellite system, and a variety of other ventures aiming to improve the coverage, accuracy, and capacity of wildlife tracking data collection. Combined with the increased availability of high-resolution environmental data and analytical developments in movement modeling, these advancements are empowering movement ecologists to ask previously unanswerable or unimaginable questions. It’s clear that this discipline sits at the precipice of major breakthroughs that could revolutionize our understanding of animal movement and the natural world.
- @Rob_Appleby
- | He/him
Wild Spy
Whilst I love everything about WILDLABS and the conservation tech community I am mostly here for the badges!!
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curator at Movebank (movebank.org)
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My main interest is in the application of geospatial technology for ecology and conservation
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Director of Icoteq Ltd, an electronics and software design consultancy developing wireless products and solutions to organisations working in the conservation, wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching sectors. Developers of the TagRanger® novel wildlife tracking products.
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Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
Behavioural ecologist @CNRS in France - working mostly on ungulates in Europe and Africa
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Sea Mammal Research Unit Univ' St Andrews
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- @PshemekZ
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IT + nature
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University of Adelaide
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- @ronanwallace
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Research scientist developing conservation technology in environmental monitoring and cultural preservation.
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- @pchwalek
- | He/him/his
I'm a PhD candidate in the Responsive Environments Group, working on electronic systems for human and wildlife monitoring.
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In this interview with Dr. Corinne Kendall of the North Carolina Zoo, Dr. Kendall shares how telemetry studies can help prevent vulture poisoning in East Africa, the conservation technology she uses in her work, and...
18 March 2021
National Geographic is offering funding up to up to $50,000 for conservationists conducting research on how the pandemic has impacted wildlife and conservation work. If you are interested in researching aspects of the...
10 March 2021
As we launch our new Sustainable Fishing Challenges group in the WILDLABS community, we are excited to welcome Daniel Steadman, the group manager, to give us an overview of three major areas in which #tech4wildlife...
4 December 2020
Introducing Movebank's Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a collection of studies containing animal movement and other animal-borne sensor data from the Arctic and Subarctic. Through this collection of 214 studies ...
17 November 2020
Do you have innovative #tech4wildlife ideas that could save one of the most endangered species on earth from extinction? Apply now to join Vaquita Hack, a hackathon for students and early career conservationists! This...
10 November 2020
We've got exciting news from the Icarus project, a satellite-based animal monitoring system: following a successful test phase this year, the first cross-continental scientific pilot project is set to begin this...
15 September 2020
To celebrate the first Black Mammalogists Week (starting Sunday, September 13th), we talked to four of the amazing Black scientists behind this event! Find out what they had to say about their favorite (and most...
10 September 2020
WILDLABS community member Thomas Gray from Argos has given us a preview of an upcoming grant program to develop open-source tags. Three years ago, Argos worked with the Arribada Initiative to develop an open-source...
17 August 2020
Funding
Protecting elephants from conservation's most pressing issues like poaching and human-wildlife conflict requires big, bold, and innovative solutions. Hackster.io, Smart Parks, Edge Impulse, Microsoft, and several other...
11 August 2020
As we launch our new Sustainable Fishing Challenges group in the WILDLABS community, we are excited to welcome Daniel Steadman, the group manager, to give us an overview of three major areas in which #tech4wildlife...
4 August 2020
In this case study from herpetologist Emily Taylor, we learn about the best methods and gear used to track snakes, lizards, and other reptiles and amphibians via radio-telemetry, and how these techniques have changed...
31 July 2020
What is it like to track endangered species using drones? In this blog post from Wildlife Drones, Dr. Debbie Saunders travels to New Zealand to track the Kākāpō, an extemely rare and elusive bird of which approximately...
8 July 2020
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85 Products
Recently updated products
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Not sure exactly how your telemetry will be deployed, but if it's going to be attached to an animal in a relatively non-invasive way, you might check with zoos or aquariums that... |
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Biologging, Marine Conservation, Sensors | 1 year 1 month ago | |
Thanks Thomas, will do! |
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Biologging | 1 year 2 months ago | |
Hi all, My team has a collection of camera traps in tropical forest canopies and one question that emerged is: can we infer light... |
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Biologging | 1 year 2 months ago | |
I thought I would share this little piece on our use of passive RECCO reflectors on GPS collars for muskoxen in Greenland:The RECCO... |
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Biologging | 1 year 2 months ago | |
Our project in very short is, setting up a sensor network for monitoring airborne biomass, mainly insects, birds and bats in near realtime, and to develop a forecast model to be... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Biologging, Remote Sensing & GIS, Sensors | 1 year 2 months ago | |
I have enjoyed the recent podcast on Monique the first animal(s) to carry a satellite collar, the ICARUS project etc. Also, regarding... |
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Biologging | 1 year 2 months ago | |
Hi Andrea! Although I am a keen user and observer of the Moveapps initiative, my R or Python coding skills are next to non- existing. I am therefore not likely to be contributing... |
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Biologging, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 3 months ago | |
These are really small acoustic tags. (Lotek Wireless, Sonotronics, and the JSATs design are examples of similar manufacturers/products.) These tags will only work in water... |
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Biologging | 1 year 3 months ago | |
There is now a really nice paper on the SnapperGPS: |
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Biologging | 1 year 3 months ago | |
Hi,I am a Ph.D. student researching causes for the population decline in American Oystercatchers in Virginia. I am using a combination of... |
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Biologging | 1 year 4 months ago | |
Hi Huascar, how are you? there's limitations on snakes since their body form and behaviour, if you leave a VHF or GPS tag as an external fixation it will get tangled with roths... |
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Biologging | 1 year 4 months ago | |
I Rob, I just saw your message today (19 Jan 2023)! It's a bit late to reply but I wanted to make sure the tag manufacturer got the credit on the quality of their work. I'm not... |
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Biologging | 1 year 4 months ago |
How to Choose a Biologger - Tracking Endangered Seabirds with Yvan Satgé
23 November 2023 12:10pm
Firetail - Black Friday
Animove 2024
17 November 2023 10:47am
Catch up with The Variety Hour: November 2023
16 November 2023 12:59pm
How to Choose a Biologger - Tracking Elephants with Neus Estela Ribera
16 November 2023 12:01pm
How to Choose a Biologger - Where do I start?
16 November 2023 12:00pm
TWS2023 - get in touch
5 November 2023 8:13pm
Digital Signals Processing - free online textbook
31 October 2023 1:50pm
I just discovered this freely available book on digital signal processing and love the fact that it is“…intended for students … who may not have much mathematical or engineering training.” Seems like a great resource for bioacoustics, biologing etc!
Movebank tutorial on uploads of tag acceleration and magnetometer data
27 October 2023 2:14pm
5 Trailblazing Wildlife Monitoring Tech Solutions across East Africa. What Monitoring Technologies are you using?
25 October 2023 12:40pm
Project Update: Improving satellite ear tag transmitters for Polar Bears
6 October 2023 1:42pm
7 October 2023 3:45pm
Just when I thought I couldn't get any stupider Steph...at least I am improving at something I guess...
13 October 2023 10:57am
Hey Rob! I also missed this variety hour thinking it was the next day. I enjoyed the recording on youtube though!
Your thoughts on distributing the components to both sides of the ear is interesting. One thing to consider is heat dessipation, I believe. I believe it is important to consider how heat conducting the part going through the ear is. A few cables would perhaps be OK. Ruggedness should have a very high priority and the more compact the device is the better, I would think.
Interesting stuff you shared about the antenna!
Cheers,
Lars
20 October 2023 3:00pm
Cheers @Lars_Holst_Hansen , yes, the antenna foam spacer idea certainly helped us a bit. I completely agree though that ruggedness, especially on a polar bear (a bit different from a koala 'bear') is a top priority, so there's a lot to consider.
Rob
PhD Opportunity - Causal inference and trial emulation for ecological observational data
20 October 2023 12:45pm
PhD Opportunity - Movement through space and time, realistic movement for species abundance methods
20 October 2023 12:33pm
Marine Flyways - Seabird Tracking Database
20 October 2023 12:23pm
To celebrate #WMBD, BirdLife is excited to share the newly identified Marine Flyways!! Seabird tracking data were shared by over 60 researchers from 48 long-distance migratory species and have revealed SIX MarineFlyways. They've created an awesome animation to go along with it!
What Biologgers are you using?
30 August 2023 10:44am
7 September 2023 10:57am
Interesting. interesting. I'm probably jumping the gun here but I'm curious - are you getting any trends on types of biologgers or specific manufacturers people are talking about? Or is everyone using different tags/manufacturers?
7 September 2023 11:00am
Ah! It's great to find out about your tags - great video, thanks for sharing. We'd love to hear from some of your users about their experiences with your tags! Would you be able to share the poll with your user community?
12 October 2023 12:24pm
Hey Stephanie,
Thanks a lot! Sorry I missed your message but of course I can ask our users about their experience with sensors!
Unravelling freshwater turtle activity with an open source, low-cost accelerometer
6 October 2023 1:04pm
Best Temperature/ Humidity Dataloggers
24 April 2023 1:30pm
11 September 2023 2:49pm
Heya Nick - ooh cool! We thought about the Kestrels but I had heard about some of the problems with them maxing out at 100. Have gone for HOBO Pro V2s
11 September 2023 2:51pm
Heya Matthew cheers for providing a comparison! We went with HOBO Pro V2s which are more expensive but have been working well so far!
23 September 2023 6:14am
Makes sense if you have the cash...
GPS-GSM Collar Recommendations?
6 September 2023 6:36pm
14 September 2023 6:23am
You are most welcome! You would have to either have them custom make collars to fit hyenas OR DIY by fitting the Milsar GSM devices to collars of your own liking - but I guess you also prefer to have drop-offs - something the Milsars do not have!
14 September 2023 6:30am
You are welcome! An alternative would be to look into the GSM options from Africa Wildlife Tracking (https://awt.co.za/product). I have no personal expereince with them at all but they are likely to have experience with hyena collars.
BTW. The internal drop-off option in the Vectronic-Aerospace collars is super reliable.
23 September 2023 6:07am
Hi Lars,
One of the problems you identified with your Milsar units was the antenna being worn off. This was solved in our units by the antenna being epoxied into an abrasion resistant heavy plastic (a single piece that was also the mount and provided extra protection on the ends). I'd still want to add more of this material around the edges of the solar panels on a hyena, but for what it is worth I tried one of the koala units on our 17 kg dog for a month or so and it didn't seem to take any worse wear than it did on the koala. Any solar GPS system is going to need a counter weight to keep the GPS and solar panels skyward, so that is where I would incorporate a release mechanism (should one be required).
Help finding goniometers for sat tag recovery at sea
8 June 2023 7:47pm
17 June 2023 6:42am
If you can find a radio amateur club in your area, they could be a good resource. They have a competitive event called fox hunting, which involves locating a hidden transmitter.
Anyway, a directional antenna for 401MHz can be made easily and cheaply but you have to know what you're doing. The cheapest (USD20?) radio receiver is an SDR dongle for your laptop or Android phone, but again you have to know what you're doing.
Using this setup would be like tracking a VHF animal tag, you swing the antenna around until you get the strongest signal and go that way. It would not be like using the Argos CLS, you don't get a GPS location of the tag, and it doesn't identify any tags it picks up.
30 June 2023 1:56pm
1/ A goniometer is a type of receiver which can measure an angle and then tell you where your signal is coming from in a specific frequency band. It is much more complicated to develop which explain price.
2/ With a basic receiver using a YAGI antenna, you will have to get the signal location by turning around. If the receiver is not enough sensitive and if the antenna is a bad quality, you won't get signal at all. You can lose lots of time.
3/ With a basic receiver using an omni-directional antenna, you will get the signal but you won't know where the signal is coming from. Same as before, if the receiver is not enough sensitive and if the antenna is a bad quality, you won't get signal at all. Depend what you are looking for.
I hope this will help you to better understand differences between these tech.
If you need more informations, you can contact me directly by mail at [email protected]
21 September 2023 6:16pm
The CLS Goniometer is an excellent tool for the job - I believe it is also available to rent (at least it used to).
If you want to go the low-budget route I would consider building a cross antenna with 4 yagi's, connect these to some kind of 4-channel receiver, and use the relative differences in intensity between the orthogonal directions to estimate the angle of arrival. You would need a way to simultaneously change the Rx gain on the four channels. Remember the transmission rate much lower than a typical VHF transmitter so it will take a while to find a tag this way. Using a single yagi would be basically impossible unless the sea is a mirror and the tag not moving in the waves.
Reviewing Now: Animal Telemetry Postdoctoral Fellowship
24 August 2023 11:09pm
Mobile App. Developer / Gibbon Research
24 August 2023 9:59am
MoveApps: A Digital Home for Tracking Data Analysis
17 August 2023 7:47pm
RFID Smart traps
23 April 2021 9:10am
7 June 2022 12:47pm
Hi Caitlin,
you might also look at this RFID logger sold by Labmaker:
Greetings from Austria,
Robin
6 January 2023 8:56pm
11 August 2023 12:50pm
Hi Caitlin
I'd recommend https://naturecounters.com/ who from past experience will work with you to come up with a good trap design. Their approach is to use an IR to detect when an animal starts to pass through the detector, which then triggers the RFID coil to be powered up. The huge advantage of this method is the battery power required is then very low, and the data can be stored into an SD card, all in one cheap, self-contained unit.
Roy
Conservation Technology Specialist
11 August 2023 1:21am
SensorDrop
11 August 2023 12:18am
Firetail 11 - GPS and sensor analysis
18 July 2023 5:04pm
11 August 2023 12:15am
Hi Tobias!
This sounds great and I am looking forward to trying it out after returning from field work!
Very cool with the Vectronic Activity data! I am looking forward to check How we can use that!
Cheers,
Lars
Firetail 11 released - for GPS and sensor analysis
10 August 2023 7:02pm
I wrote a short article on new features in Firetail 11. The most recent version (11.0.3) features some great performance improvements and also fully enables the new reporting module.
see also: https://wildlabs.net/discussion/firetail-11-gps-and-sensor-analysis
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Judges' Panel Honorees
4 August 2023 10:00am
5 November 2023 9:04pm
I'm registered with the TWS2023 app, so feel free to nudge me there as well