GPS Tracking: Wildlife

What is wildlife tracking?

In simple terms, wildlife tracking tracks the whereabouts and movements of animals. Radio tracking technology can help to determine the precise location of an animal and what the animal is doing. With this data, wildlife teams and scientists can monitor the daily movements of the animal and its habitat and allow reproduction or focus on animal control.

Nevertheless, tracking systems are divided into three categories–satellite tracking, VHF radio tracking, and global positioning system (GPS) tracking.

VHF radio tracking has been in use since 1963. The animal is first sedated, and then a radio transmitter is fitted on the animal. The transmitter sends a signal to a radio receiver and antenna. However, the antenna should be close to the transmitter to pick up signals. Initially, these radio transmitters were big in size, but scientists have been able to keep the size small now.

Satellite tracking is like VHF tracking, but the only difference is that radio signals will be sent to the satellite instead of a radio receiver. Satellite tracking overcomes the drawback of area limitation of VHF tracking–it doesn’t need to be near the antenna to gain radio signals. All they need is a modern computer.

The latest and the best tracking is GPS tracking. Rather than a transmitter, a radio receiver is placed on the animal, and the receiver picks up signals from at least 4 special satellites orbiting the Earth. A computer on the receiver calculates the animal’s location, sends this data to another set of satellites, and these send to scientists. So, GPS tracking wildlife will help you determine the animal’s location anywhere on Earth.

Today, you can use GPS data and high-resolution satellite images to track animal movements, patterns, behaviour, and much more. GPS tracking can help the team to understand why and where animals are getting lost, along with other data.

Why do we need wildlife tracking?

Today, around 41,000 species are at risk of extinction, and 16,300 are endangered. Over the past few decades, human encroachment, like urbanisation and deforestation, have triggered global warming and climate change, affecting thousands of species.

Besides this, wildlife tracking and illegal poaching drive the numbers and affect the entire wildlife geography. What is needed is strong conservation efforts and stricter wildlife preservation laws to save our habitat before we risk losing any more species.

Conservation agencies have to consider different wildlife needs to ensure proper security. Conservationists can use wildlife tracking devices to monitor animal movements and achieve their goals. Besides tracking animal movements, a wildlife GPS tracker can help with species demographics, habitat utilisation, poaching events, and much more.

This data can help them to plan their conservation activities and augment the impact of their purpose. GPS tracking animals will help conservation agencies directly monitor animals and their activities, get notified of any problems, and quickly work on them. Ultimately, we must protect our habitat before more animals become extinct, and technology can significantly help here.

What are the advantages of animal tracking and GPS systems?

GPS systems for animal tracking offer several advantages. It is very beneficial for livestock tracking because even one cow or sheep that goes missing can cost a lot of money.

• Animal tracking and GPS systems can help you know the precise location details of your animals.
• Nowadays, you can track the movement of animals in real time, giving better visibility.
• It gives you the peace of mind that your animals are safe; if they aren’t, you can track and recover them soon.
• You also get other insights like animal behaviour, if any animal is always away from the herd, eating habits, etc.
• Cutting-edge GPS trackers can also give you information about the animal’s health condition, helping you detect anything unusual before it worsens.

Which are the good tracking devices for animals?

Wildlife tracking is helpful in many ways and has been gaining importance recently. Manywildlife GPS trackers are available to help you track your animals, and Rewire Security’s portable GPS trackers assist you with precise and reliable tracking of animals.

The Spytrack Nano weighs only 68 gms and offers 10 days of standby and the Spytrack Plus with 2 months of standby. With GPSLive cloud-based GPS Tracking platform, you can view the location data of all animals from a single interface as the data is backed to the cloud.

GPSLive also offers reports on animal behaviour and movements. It provides wide coverage and ensures a strong signal across 150 countries. Further, you’ll be notified if the animal has gone too far or if anything unusual takes place. All the notifications are sent on your smartphone, which means you can view them anytime, anywhere.