From the big, heavy collars with radio transmitters used in the early seventies to today’s miniaturized cell phone cameras and global positioning systems, knowledge of animal habitat usage and needs has increased tremendously via remote wildlife tracking systems.
Radio Transmitters Used Originally to Track Wildlife
Collars with radio transmitters attached have been used on a variety of species, from elephants in Sri Lanka to jaguars in the United States. Hand held antenna towers were carried by researchers. Today the transmitters can be made small enough for nearly any creature with batteries weighing as little as 200mg. And developing methods of using low orbit satellites to collect the data from those radio transmitters is in progress.
Global Positioning Systems Follow Wildlife
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are so common in everyday life now it is hardly a surprise that the technology is also used to in wildlife tracking. It has been particularly useful in monitoring marine mammals and fish species which travel long distances and spend time underwater, making other types of tracking difficult.
Observing Wildlife With Remote Cameras
The popularity of nest box cameras for backyard use had its beginnings in wildlife research. The ability to observe nesting birds without disturbance greatly enhanced knowledge of avian development. Today, cell phone cameras are use to provide the images in real time to remote observers.
Cell Phone Technology Used to Track Migration
All those cell phone towers put in place to enhance human communication are now being utilized in tracking migratory animals. The ability to follow small songbirds had been restricted by the size of the equipment the birds would need to carry. Miniaturized units are becoming very inexpensive and with the number of cell phone towers that exist worldwide there will be fewer and fewer gaps in data.
National Geographic’s Crittercam
Possibly one of the most famous wildlife tracking devices is National Geographic’s Critter Cam. Critter Cam takes advantage of a camera attached to a wild animal to view and hear the environment from the animal’s perspective.
Initially used on marine species, it has also been deployed on land animals. What most people are not aware of is that Critter Cam also monitors depth, temperature, light level, accelerometry (how fast an animal accelerates and decelerates), magnetometry (the magnitude and direction of a magnetic field) and velocity (actual speed at which an animal is moving) when tracking marine animals.
Tagging Of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP) Uses Multiple Wildlife Tracking Systems
The Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP) project has employed as many as eight different types of wildlife tracking devices in the attempt to learn about the activities of marine wildlife. Because TOPP is tracking everything from seals to sea turtles to ocean going bird species, it has had to experiment with a variety of devices. In addition to the problems of ensuring the right wildlife tracking device is used on the right species, TOPP faces a tremendous challenge in managing the data that comes from monitoring so many diverse species.
Efforts to protect wildlife by understanding their habitat needs have been greatly enhanced as the development of remote animal tracking equipment has advanced in the last half decade.
Dawn M. Smith - A vet nurse, Dawn has worked in wildlife rehabilitation and conservation around the world in addition to her veterinary hospital ...
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