Flying Drones: The New Way to Track Animals
Image: Wildlife drone in flight
Article Contributed by Wildlife Drones
In this fast changing world fraught by environmental challenges, understanding animal movements is critical. From uncovering migration patterns to population demographics, we can learn a lot about different species just by following their movements. More importantly, we can use this information to better inform conservation strategies, land management practices, and mitigate biosecurity threats.
Wildlife Drones is an Australian company revolutionising how animals can be tracked. They have developed an innovative system that combines radio-tracking technology with drones. This technology presents a new approach to surveillance and has multiple possible applications to help strengthen Australia’s biosecuriy system.
Radio tracking is a technique used worldwide to locate animals tagged with lightweight transmitters that emit very high frequency radio signals. Until now, radio tracking has been done manually with users spending hours trekking through rugged and remote areas hoping to pick up the signals from individual animals.
Wildlife Drones’ unique radio receiver can be attached to an off-the-shelf drone and eliminates the need to radio-track manually. When launched, the drone creates an immediate high-point that maximises the radio receiver’s ability to detect signals. It can also track up to one hundred animals simultaneously and display their live locations on a high resolution map on a laptop in the field.
Wildlife Drones offers researchers, invasive species managers, farmers and other land managers the ability to efficiently track and monitor the movements of their animals. The technology also offers huge savings in time, cost and effort.
For more information visit: www.wildlifedrones.net