MOVETECH TELEMETRY: A JOINT PROJECT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CUTTING EDGE TRACKING DEVICES FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION

Movetech Telemetry is a consortium involving CIBIO-InBIO, cE3c/FCUL, University of East Anglia (UK) and British Trust for Ornithology aiming at developing state of the art, low cost tracking technology for wildlife. New technological advances enabled a very rapid increase in academic research focusing on migration and animal movement. However, wildlife tracking market is dominated by expensive technologies hardly accessible to research projects with limited budgets. With this in mind, Movetech Telemetry tracking devices were envisaged as being long-lasting solar-powered with the capacity to collect both locational and sensor data that are subsequently transmitted remotely to the end user. After four years of development, we decided to launch our first commercial devices. These were designed to track birds, enabling GPS tracking, behaviour monitoring using measurements of acceleration with a 3D accelerometer and data transmission using the GSM network. Additionally, in 2016 we were awarded a NERC project (UK science funding) to develop a proof-of-concept with tracking devices using long-range radio transmission protocol (LoRa) optimized for low battery consumption. This will enable the creation of our own networks with lighter trackers that can operate in complementary mode with the GSM trackers.

João Paulo Silva is a post-doc at CIBIO-InBIO, CEABN-InBIO and cE3c. His research is mostly focussed on farmland bird ecology and on the impacts of linear infrastructures on birds using movement ecology as a means to provide insights as to where, when and why species move. As a member of Movetech Telemetry, he isleading the scientific component of the project and coordinating the software development.

[Host: Paulo Célio Alves, Conservation Genetics and Wildlife Management]

Image credits: Roberto Sanchez