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.
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Article
The tracking system has begun testing its new satellite receiver that will continue uninterrupted tracking of animals from space
13 July 2023
Spaceborne Satellite-tag RF Systems to Measure Spatiotemporal Patterns of Wildlife
12 July 2023
In this article from Alasdair Davies, he discusses how marine tracking's unique challenges could impact its potential for sustainability in the future.
12 July 2023
In this Conservation Tech Showcase case study from Osa Conservation, you’ll learn about how technology is aiding their long-term efforts to prevent wildlife crime, protect critical species, and build a climate-adaptive...
22 June 2023
In this interview between Rob Appleby and Ellie Warren, we discuss the importance of DIY, recycling, and sharing tools in order to make our community more sustainable.
14 June 2023
Come work with us! WILDLABS and Fauna & Flora are seeking an intern to help develop the movement ecology content on the Inventory - our wiki-inspired database of conservation technology. Accepting applications until...
6 June 2023
The Innovation in Practice edition of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is still seeking proposals about conservation technology
6 March 2023
The Zoological Society of London, with the support of WILDLABS and the UK Space Agency, are proud to publish this new guide to satellite technologies for tracking wildlife.
17 February 2023
Researchers and conservationists are embarking on a bold initiative to save the world's most trafficked wild mammal — the pangolin
16 February 2023
As part of the AniMove eLearning programme, you are now able to stream 2022 Animal movement & remote sensing course lectures opensource.
10 February 2023
Are you stuck on an AI or ML challenge in your conservation work? Apply now for the chance to receive tailored expert advice from data scientists! Applications due 27th January 2023
18 January 2023
Discover how humans are working with animals – from dragonflies and ospreys to hedgehogs and jaguars – to improve our understanding of wildlife behaviour and numbers around the world, and how best to protect them.
16 January 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi Guys, I am currently a zoology undergraduate at Queen Marys London, and was just wondering if there is much use of telemetry still... |
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Biologging | 8 years ago | |
I tweeted about it! |
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Biologging | 8 years ago | |
There's also movebank, which is a repository fo wildlife tracking information. |
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Biologging | 8 years 1 month ago | |
Hi, I am part of a student group who are researching training courses in animal movement that include remote sensing. If you’ve... |
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Biologging | 8 years 2 months ago | |
The police have tried to use New World Vultures to find dead bodies in Europe. The success was some what limited but not the fault of the birds. This does open up a whole area... |
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Biologging | 8 years 3 months ago | |
@Dave any updates on this project? |
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Biologging | 8 years 3 months ago | |
Interesting biotelemetry symposium, 22 - 24 May, in Leuven Belgium, organised by the International Society on Biotelemetry. Main topics... |
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Biologging | 8 years 4 months ago | |
This fully funded PhD position may be of interest to the community: Developing Wild Animal Tracking Systems Using Mataki... |
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Biologging | 8 years 4 months ago | |
The Journal of Animal Ecology with the Journal of Applied Ecology and Methods in Ecology and Evolution have published a... |
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Biologging | 8 years 4 months ago | |
Margaret Driciru with the Uganda Wildlife Authority is doing great work with mobile reporting tools for rapid response to... |
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Biologging | 8 years 5 months ago | |
Oh wow. This is perfect for what I do... tracking tigers by their voices alone! |
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Biologging | 8 years 5 months ago |
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Community Choice Honorees
3 August 2023 10:00am
Workshop on the use of information and communications technology for conservation in Central Asia
1 August 2023 11:50pm
A novel kinetic energy harvesting system for lifetime deployments of wildlife trackers
13 July 2023 11:30am
ICARUS flies faster, further
13 July 2023 11:27am
Postdoc for electrical engineering at NASA
12 July 2023 12:08pm
Sustained Effort: Can We Improve the Sustainability of Marine Telemetry Tags?
12 July 2023 9:30am
Pangolin Tagging Challenges
11 January 2017 11:22pm
3 July 2023 9:24am
Hi,
Icoteq are launching a new range of small tags that would be ideal for pangolin tracking!
Called TagRanger, the technology incorporates a LoRaWAN based tag with built in sensors and GPS. It also features a ranging solution giving you your distance to the tag when within range <150m - ideal for finding something which is well hidden as you can navigate your way to the tag until it's within touching distance!
The user carries a small handheld 'Finder' device that acts as a LoRaWAN gateway paired to a mobile phone for live mapping (on and offline maps) and ranging functions.
Size is limited by your preferred battery size, but could be as small as 32mm x 38mm x15mm with a 400mAh battery.
Production units available beginning of September, happy to do demos and trials with prototypes now!
Please feel free to contact me for more information.
5 July 2023 1:53am
Hi!
We have been working with Save Vietnam's Wildlife to track Pangolins for a couple of years now. You can read our Case Study here:
Protecting pangolins from illegal trade - Wildlife Drones
Wildlife Drones teamed up with Save Vietnam’s Wildlife (SVW) to track tack movement patterns of released pangolins.
Wildlife Drones
We also documented the project and spoke with Save Vietnam's Executive Director about the challenges of tracking Pangolins - here is the video:
They used the Telenax pangolin tags (15g) during our project which worked great with our drone-based telemetry system and were able to receive signals from a long distance. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, we are always happy to discuss tracking projects!
Osa Conservation: A Multi-Tech Toolbox of Solutions
22 June 2023 10:42am
The Wildlife Society Conference
19 June 2023 5:59am
Sustained Effort: Out with the New, In with the Old
14 June 2023 10:00am
movedesign: a tool to evaluate sampling design in biologging
12 June 2023 11:25pm
This paper discusses movedesign, a new R app intended to evaluate the effectiveness of sampling design in animal movement research projects. This tool could be incredibly helpful for biologging community members looking to increase the effectiveness of their projects by better understanding the best duration and intervals for data collection.
Wildlife tracking collar powers itself as animals roam
12 June 2023 8:27am
This article introduces an innovation in wildlife tracking, where researchers have developed a tracker powered by the movement of animals themselves, eliminating the need for battery replacements and allowing for long-term monitoring.
WILDLABS Conservation Tech Intern (The Inventory)
6 June 2023 10:43am
GPS collars are helping save Sumatra’s last wild elephants
28 May 2023 6:20pm
Rimba Satwa Foundation (RSF), an Indonesian elephant conservation NGO, is employing GPS collars on elephants to mitigate human-elephant conflicts. RSF aims to enhance collar usage, surveillance, and automation for sustained effectiveness in the long run.
Filter Last X Positions
23 May 2023 4:41pm
Filter Last X Locations - is a new super simple but super powerful moveapp.
https://moveapps.org/apps/browser/ebe11063-fd98-4d8d-a22d-f143ec434b6f
I will be using this to send me the latest positions of all active muskox collars via low bandwidth email while in the field (basically off the grid).
Animal tracking stories
22 May 2023 2:19am
Email Alerts via Moveapps
12 May 2023 2:33pm
ICCB 2023 WILDLABS Workshop: Bridging Sectors for Movement Ecology Innovation
9 May 2023 8:37pm
Collar Tracking vs. Camera Traps for Monitoring Mexican Wolves
5 May 2023 9:08pm
This article compares and contrasts the success of their wolf monitoring efforts with both collars and camera traps. The camera traps were intended to help researchers identify individual wolves within the population, but they experienced difficulties identifying both uncollared wolves and those with marked collars.
GPS collaring study of Ethiopian wolves
5 May 2023 12:55am
This news article discusses the first study to track Ethiopian wolves since 1992. The study focused on adult wolves from six packs in the Simien Mountains and used Lotek LiteTrack Iridium 250 collars. Community members working in biologging with species that are rarely studied will be especially interested in this effort to understand the wolves' behaviors and how human presence may be impacting these packs.
Feathered forecast: Tech tools comb weather data for bird migrations
26 April 2023 2:50pm
Since its launch in 1999, the BirdCast project has used weather radar data to track and forecast bird migrations across the U.S. In recent years, technology such as cloud computing and machine learning have helped make the work of researchers in the project easier and more automated. The BirdCast project is now working on integrating radar data with human observations and bioacoustics to help identify the bird species traversing the skies.
Video: Virginia Tech tracking bobcats to preserve wildlife
26 April 2023 2:45pm
Quick feature of Virgina Tech project using camera traps and biologgers to track bobcats, collecting data to inform human-wildlife coexistance efforts
Better Vectronic Live Feed to Movebank
24 April 2023 9:01pm
RFID Tech for small animals?
23 March 2023 5:40pm
24 March 2023 1:15pm
Hi again Emily,
@tom_august just pointed to this PhD thesis in another post that could be of interest to you also:
All the best,
Rob
7 April 2023 3:57pm
22 April 2023 3:14am
Not what you asked for (sorry), but if they are cryptic then a possible first step could be to deploy capacitive sensors everywhere, to get a sense of where they like to hang out and when. I'm thinking of TTP223 touch sensors attached to a data logger.
Real-time Animal Location Data Sources?
30 March 2023 4:32am
6 April 2023 4:18pm
Thanks for the link, Amanda. That Shark page looks great. Very good point on temporal resolution and the burden of overhead of sending data in real-time, I hadn't really considered that.
21 April 2023 6:08pm
In addition to those noted, you can try the Animal Telemetry Network
21 April 2023 8:32pm
Thank you Thomas, I'll take a look.
Catch up with The Variety Hour: April 2023
21 April 2023 10:42am
Margo Luminous Update: Next Phase BETA Release
31 March 2023 8:55pm
12 April 2023 10:57pm
Spring is our busiest time of year and we are also in the middle of an expansion currently so they may not be able to respond. Will ask when they are prepping for variety hour.
13 April 2023 5:11pm
Hi Lars,
I can chime in to answer some of your questions.
1. The web portal is here. This is only a basic placeholder while we work on a better system with login security and 2 way comms.
https://margosupplies.com/us-en/luminous/
Send me a PM to see one our test Elk in Jackson, Wyoming.
2. Our data is always transmitted sequentially, oldest samples first.
3. Currently our staff must do any remote reprogramming, just send us an email. This feature will be part of the new web portal.
4. Iridium allows up to 340 bytes per SBD transmission. Each sample is 17 bytes so we can fit 20 samples per transmission. With good signal we can clear out a backlog of data almost immediately.
5. Currently no geofencing or alerts but that is on the road map.
6. As Brett stated.
7. As Brett stated we are not going to support traditional VHF since this has caused many problems with poachers and wildlife photographers finding the animals. We are developing our own 900MHz LoRa based system which will securely transmit the devices location.This will be released in the form of a USB doggle with antenna that can be plugged into an Android device.
In regard to your questions about accelerometer and Doppler shift.
We have an onboard accelerometer sampling at 50Hz and currently this information is fed into a human calibrated pedometer algorithm. Currently it gives us a rough indicator of how busy the animal is. This sensor could be repurposed based on customer needs.
Every time an iridium device transmits information, the receiving satellite records a rough position based on doppler effect from the signal. This gives you a backup geo-location with accuracy in the kilometer range. If you use the above tool and click download CSV you can see this information.
Happy to answer any more questions.
14 April 2023 8:38am
Hi Jackson @MargoJack!
Thanks a lot for answering these questions.
Looks like you have a very interesting product!
Interesting point you raise with VHF beeing intercepted by poachers etc.
Would there be sufficient memory to log accelerometer data at something like 8Hz on-board the collar for later inference of behaviours?
Will you make versions for other LoRa frequency regions?
Cheers,
Lars
Field testing of a radio telemetry system to be deployed in the sea.
24 January 2023 6:52am
21 March 2023 2:47am
Here's a link about waterproofing in the marine environment, if you haven't already discovered Ed Mallon.
21 March 2023 8:52am
Oh, great link! Been doing marine projects recently and a big headache is protecting submerged electronics. I've kind of heard of many of those techniques, but great to see them collected all in one place and with first hand experienced commentary regarding them.
12 April 2023 2:32pm
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 have similar species.
I worked in that industry for a long time and we tested telemetry for seals, sea lions, polar bears and elephants. There might have been more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. This can help improve attachment methods and test how tough the animals will be on the equipment.
21 April 2023 2:04pm
Hi - Operation Pangolin is exploring conservation technologies for Pangolins, here's a link to the project: Operation Pangolin launches to save world's most trafficked wild mammal | WILDLABS
Let's keep in touch!