A network dubbed the internet of animals is helping track migrating critters

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Let's turn to the animal kingdom now. A network dubbed the internet of animals helps track migrating critters to learn about their environment and ways to protect them.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Ellen Aiken is an animal movement researcher at the University of Wyoming. Using traditional methods is no easy task.

ELLEN AIKEN: Folks would have to spend many grueling months in the field, following animals that are migrating, where they don't even know where the animal is moving.

MARTÍNEZ: For an initial test phase, scientists are tracking 10 animal species around the world from jaguars in the Amazon to geese in Siberia. In North America, Ashley Lohr is coordinating the project with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

ASHLEY LOHR: The purpose is to produce kind of these solar-powered, satellite-transmissible, lightweight tags that we can place on various species of wildlife to get a sense of how animals and populations and species are doing.

FADEL: For Aiken, better data could vastly improve decisions about how humans live and where we build.

AIKEN: It allows people to work towards ensuring that we maintain the ability of animals to freely move, balancing kind of the needs to maybe build a new wind farm, but making sure that it's not right in the flyway of an important bird migration.

MARTÍNEZ: Aiken says researchers will be able to study more animals in more places because the new technology is also more affordable. Lohr says the sharp-shinned hawk is a good example.

LOHR: They're a very small hawk, which means it's very difficult to find small enough tags that we can put on these hawks without affecting their behavior and being a detriment to them.

FADEL: Aiken says she wants to know more about some much smaller animals.

AIKEN: We still have so much to discover about insect movement, and how insects move across the really complex and dynamic environments.

MARTÍNEZ: Icarus plans to launch new satellites next year.

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