Radio Tech Tracking Bird Migration

In this article from Popular Science. Sara Van Note outlines the progress the Motus Wildlife Tracking System has made in aerial wildlife conservation research. Motus is a system of radio receiver stations across the globe that track the movement of tagged flying animals, the data is then uploaded to the Motus website.

What is it?

"The Motus philosophy is “all about collaboration"(Van Note / Undark, 2023)

The Motus system spans 34 countries and is a shared resource that any scientist can contribute to by tagging animals or building Motus stations.

Progress

"Until recently, tracking tags were too large and heavy for small songbirds. The Motus system uses tags that weigh less than 3 percent of a bird’s weight—in the case of a small songbird that weighs around 18 grams, a tag weighs just half a gram." (Van Note / Undark, 2023)

"So far, more than 43,600 animals, including butterflies, bats, and birds, have been tagged by researchers using Motus globally." (Van Note / Undark, 2023)

Motus has created a more complete way of tracking the migration of smaller animals and an efficient shared global resource that will continue to grow.\

References

Van Note / Undark, S. (2023, November 26). Tracking bird migration with radio-based technology. Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/technology/tracking-bird-migration-radio/