Animal movement technologies have already significantly advanced our understanding of the natural world, from uncovering previously mysterious migration patterns and key movement corridors to demonstrating the impacts of anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Continuing advances in the development of technologies for collecting and transmitting bio-logging data, combined with the increased availability of high-resolution environmental data and analytical developments in movement modelling, are opening doors to novel applications. However, there are still major gaps in the space, including mobilizing movement data to translate data from tracking devices into insights for application in policy and practice. This group is a place for the animal movement community to connect and discuss our efforts to advance the field.
Resources for beginners
Learn about WILDLABS Animal Movement research projects
- MoveBON Initiative Announcement
- MoveBON Follow-Up Discussion
- Virtual Meetup Season 4: Tracking Progress (A WILDLABS research project on movement ecology)
Group curators
- @TaliaSpeaker
- | She/her
WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US



- 23 Resources
- 62 Discussions
- 25 Groups
- @lhughey
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Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
I am an ecologist and program manager with experience leading collaborative research projects in international settings. I specialize in the application of animal tracking data to conserve migratory species on a changing planet.



- 6 Resources
- 10 Discussions
- 3 Groups
- @reny.tyson.moore
- | She/Her/Hers
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 4 Groups
Tech-Driven Conservation with a Wild Twist

- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 8 Groups
Zoological Society London (ZSL)
Technical Project Manager in ZSL's Conservation Technology Unit



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- 26 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 1 Groups
Currently a data scientist in industry working on mechanistic models of risk, previously worked on modeling coral reefs. I am interested in the potential for emerging technologies and new ideas to help us solve environmental crises.
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- 14 Groups
- @OakAlice
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PhD researcher standardising machine learning approaches for behaviour classification in free-roaming wild animals.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- @Kasi
- | He/him
Game Rangers International
Kasi Amor Kalande is a young conservationist with experience in elephant movement research, GIS, and conservation technology.
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- 7 Groups
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- 6 Groups
- @claumemo
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- 7 Groups
Postdoc studying African waterbird ecology
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- 1 Groups
- @Phillip_Swart
- | He
I'm a conservationist working in the Vulture conservation space in South Africa with a huge passion for technology.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 18 Groups
- @peterdesmet
- | he/him
Biodiversity informatician at INBO. Passionate about open data and open science. I develop research software, maintain data standards and publish datasets, mostly for animal movement research.
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- 5 Groups
Do you have innovative #tech4wildlife ideas that could save one of the most endangered species on earth from extinction? Apply now to join Vaquita Hack, a hackathon for students and early career conservationists! This...
10 November 2020
We've got exciting news from the Icarus project, a satellite-based animal monitoring system: following a successful test phase this year, the first cross-continental scientific pilot project is set to begin this...
15 September 2020
To celebrate the first Black Mammalogists Week (starting Sunday, September 13th), we talked to four of the amazing Black scientists behind this event! Find out what they had to say about their favorite (and most...
10 September 2020
WILDLABS community member Thomas Gray from Argos has given us a preview of an upcoming grant program to develop open-source tags. Three years ago, Argos worked with the Arribada Initiative to develop an open-source...
17 August 2020
Funding
Protecting elephants from conservation's most pressing issues like poaching and human-wildlife conflict requires big, bold, and innovative solutions. Hackster.io, Smart Parks, Edge Impulse, Microsoft, and several other...
11 August 2020
As we launch our new Sustainable Fishing Challenges group in the WILDLABS community, we are excited to welcome Daniel Steadman, the group manager, to give us an overview of three major areas in which #tech4wildlife...
4 August 2020
In this case study from herpetologist Emily Taylor, we learn about the best methods and gear used to track snakes, lizards, and other reptiles and amphibians via radio-telemetry, and how these techniques have changed...
31 July 2020
What is it like to track endangered species using drones? In this blog post from Wildlife Drones, Dr. Debbie Saunders travels to New Zealand to track the Kākāpō, an extemely rare and elusive bird of which approximately...
8 July 2020
In this three-part WILDLABS feature article series, we take a look at the various technologies used to fight the greatest threat to wild condors, lead poisoning, explore the innovations changing the ways we study and...
2 July 2020
Article
SMART is excited to showcase the features of their new data collection solution, SMART Mobile! Built around the specific needs of the SMART user community, this streamlined mobile tool allows staff in protected areas to...
23 June 2020
Our friends at the Conservation Leadership Programme are pleased to announce the winners of their 2020 CLP Team Award! Today, they'd like to feature some of the inspiring teams and projects that have earned this honor,...
8 June 2020
Conservation technology largely consists of two categories: tools to monitor and study wildlife and their habitats, and solutions to mitigate or prevent negative human impacts. The fight against poaching in particular...
4 June 2020
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91 Products
Recently updated products
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi Jay, Alastair, Small world! You've got a great resource at your doorstep then (c: Your idea of tracking the birds between known feeding locations is a good... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 1 month ago | |
We're incredibly excited to kickstart the OpenCollar initiative. If you haven't seen it yet, check out opencollar.io ... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 3 months ago | |
Thanks all, very useful links, some of them, like the orangutan nest mapping, wildfind, & sensorgnomes, I knew about, some not. Will have a poke :) |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 4 months ago | |
Hi everyone, If you're interested in examining the movement ecology of individuals in fragmented landscapes our new paper 'The... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 5 months ago | |
Hello Mike I am not sure whether a datalogger would resolve radio noise problems. I would expect more success from improving the antenna/receiver circuitry to get rid of the... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 6 months ago | |
Hi everyone, Folks might be interested in a webinar I’ll be hosting with colleagues at HeroX and NASA on our crowdsourcing... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 7 months ago | |
Just to close this issue - I developed some iButtons and radio trackers which could be encased in medical safe epoxy and inserted into fruits for consumption by elephants.... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 7 months ago | |
Microwave PTT's offer 5 free tags annually to early career reserachers. To find out more read the attached document and apply by 31st... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 7 months ago | |
Thanks Steph, No write-up. This little experiment was squeezed into some actual work. Very happy to describe components if someone is interested. The balloon hobby... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 8 months ago | |
Telemetry spanish paid online course from Spain https://ingeoexpert.com/cursos/curso-de-seguimiento-de-fauna-mediante-telemetria/?v=... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 8 months ago | |
Results: When we picked them up after a month and a half in the field, the base-stations had worked perfectly for the whole time. The battery levels stayed fairly consistent at... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 8 months ago | |
Recommendations: Mataki-LITE tags have a steep learning curve but they very adaptabile and cheap (for remote-download tags) so I hope these lessons-learned will prove... |
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Animal Movement | 6 years 8 months ago |
News: The Latest in Conservation Tech
10 March 2022 12:00am
Opportunities: PhD Graduate Assistantship
8 March 2022 12:00am
Dog GPS Loggers
21 December 2021 8:06pm
20 February 2022 6:59am
20 February 2022 10:50am
I'm co-developing SnapperGPS as part of my PhD. We're currently working on getting a release on GroupGets. Everything is moving a little slowly because of the chip shortage, though.
Happy to hear there's interest!
Paper suggestions for learning movement tracking technology development
9 February 2022 7:16pm
Tech Tutors: How do I get started with OpenCollar Edge Trackers?
3 November 2021 11:35am
Technical Difficulties: The Death of Giants
3 November 2021 12:00am
Opportunity: PhD or Postdoctoral Research Fellowships - Chinstrap penguin biologging
1 November 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: Can You Hear Me Now?
19 October 2021 12:00am
The need for speed in Sea Turtle Telemetry
15 October 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: A Deployment Checklist
13 October 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: Tracking Thunderbird
8 October 2021 12:00am
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Computer Vision Approach for Animal Tracking and Modeling
20 September 2021 12:00am
How do I use satellite IoT to track wildlife & monitor remote equipment?
1 September 2021 12:00am
TinyTx wildlife Audio Surveillance
27 August 2021 7:16am
New Resource: Data Visualisation Tool for Animal Movement Data
18 August 2021 12:00am
Proximity detection in koalas
12 August 2021 8:01am
R package for triangulation?
29 June 2021 2:38am
16 July 2021 3:31pm
This paper mentions some, and is just a great review on localization more broadly! I'd look into gibbonR and warbleR
Acoustic localization of terrestrial wildlife: Current practices and future opportunities (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6216).
This paper used Sound Finder -- Validation of an Acoustic Location System to Monitor Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) Long Calls (https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22398)
And this one used a MATLAB script -- Tracking cryptic animals using acoustic multilateration: A system for long-range wolf detection (https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5092973)
Creating a global database for drift data from pop-up satellite tags
28 April 2021 2:16pm
4 June 2021 12:14pm
You could use Movebank for this, stream the data into a study, manage sharing settings to make some public and keep others private if needed. Lots of non-bird data in there!
Cheers
Roland
4 June 2021 6:40pm
You might also check out the Ocean Data Platform team at https://www.oceandata.earth/ They're trying to be a one-stop shop for ocean data and have recently ingested all the IOC data. EMODNet has an ingestion portal and data ambassadors who can negotiate data sharing agreements and anonymization/aggregation. Also @ThomasGray_Argos data sharing agreements and data governance is something I work on and would be interested in talking more about the privacy/user data issues you mention. I;ve been thinking about the need for a data intermediary that can hold data safely, scrub PII, and then share it with open platforms so each sensor owner or small entitty doesn't have to negotiate their own data sharing licenses.
4 June 2021 7:15pm
@skatewing Shoot me an email, and we can discuss (tgray@woodsholegroup.com).
Otter survival monitoring
2 June 2021 7:05pm
WWF: Carnivore Collaring in Zambia
28 April 2021 12:00am
Event: The 7th International Bio-Logging Symposium

12 April 2021 12:00am
Machine learning for animal tracking Kaggle competition?
17 February 2021 10:32am
28 February 2021 7:16am
Hi,
I have plenty of data which is not (yet) available to everyone. If still relevant, please contact me for more details.
ronef@post.bgu.ac.il
26 March 2021 4:37pm
What kind of data are you looking for? Like just lat/long coordinates, GPS points, .shp files, etc.? I have a small amount of GPS data from focal follows of lemurs (+ behavioral context/individual ID/subgroup, etc.) over a 3 month period. It's not published as I'm only using it in conjunction with a vocal dataset I'm working with. But I imagine you're probably after much larger datasets?
9 April 2021 7:33pm
There are lots of data in Movebank that are not publically availalbe, all the grey dots in the search map. You can contact each data owner and arrange for access to the data.
GPS tag modification
23 February 2021 9:56am
28 February 2021 9:49am
Hi Carl,
Thanks, I think I see what you mean. I would probably do as you have done, glue the tag onto a fibreglass plate, and screw that plate onto a scale. For glue, silicone caulking or epoxy putty can be used, my preference would be caulking because it's easier to extricate the tag from it when the time comes.
As for the mounting plate, my preference is fibreglass of the sort used in electronics, as this can be glued to. For making the screw holes, if you have trouble with them splintering, I've heard that you can melt a clean hole using a heated iron nail, instead of drilling.
Thanks,
-harold
13 March 2021 6:42am
Hi Carl,
Is there any reason you cannot screw the GPS unit directly to a scale through the three existing holes? You could use a quick setting glue between the scale and GPS, not for strength but to ensure there is nothing that can get between the scale and GPS to bust it off. Maybe quick set epoxy but even just gap filler might do the job.
I just realised how old this thread is so maybe you have already solved the issue.
Matthew
20 March 2021 11:02am
Hi Matthew-- thanks. Very good suggestions. I am already going w the option of having the metal plate underneath. The tags cost a lot and I would rather go w the option that I am sure would ensure I can retrieve them.
Interview: Protecting Vultures with Telemetry
18 March 2021 12:00am
Heat shrinking "stuff" to collars
25 February 2021 10:07am
13 March 2021 7:16am
Hi Lars,
I'm currently heat shrinking transmitters to make a simple pouch to hold a transmitter to an ear tag. Because I want to prevent damage to the ear as much as possible, I figured it was desirable to have a material that would break before the ear does but I have not put this to the test. Two units deployed so far without an issue except for an intermittent fault with one of the transmitters. Hopefully not caused by the heatshrink. I think the biggest issue with heat-shrinking to a collar is that the heatshrink goes hard (at least the stuff I used) and will pull the collar toward the shape of the hard object you are attaching. A bit of preplanning and adding the desired shape before applying the heat should resolve that.

Funding Opportunity: COVID-19 Science Fund
10 March 2021 12:00am
Getting VHF transmitters in a quick turnaround time
26 February 2021 1:14pm
26 February 2021 2:45pm
Hi Kas,
Advanced Telemetry Systems has been able to get me transmitters in less than 4 weeks a few times. It does depend on how busy they are, though, so not guaranteed.
Good luck,
Kyler
1 March 2021 1:23pm
Hi Kyler,
That's great! Thank you for the lead - I'll get in touch with them asap.
Cheers, and all the best,
Kas
What to consider when planning our project for endangered, rarely seen species
5 February 2021 10:52am
26 February 2021 3:36pm
https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rse2.191
This paper may be of interest!
And the latest Oryx edition is all camera-trap papers - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/issue/4E2CEA9634F17EEBB58E5A871ABB21CA
Gunshot detector on elephant tracking collars
28 June 2017 4:36pm
25 February 2021 10:02am
Interesting!
The µMoth initiative also seems very promising. They seem to be employed on dogs now as preparation for use on wild dogs in the Carnivore Bytes project.
Animal location and activity tracking devices – could these be useful for conservation studies?
30 May 2018 4:50pm
31 May 2018 6:37pm
Hi!
I am in the process of creating remote tracking devices to study activity and social behavior in lemurs. I would be happy to chat and learn more about your study system / try to offer any insight about tracking devices.
-Meredith
25 February 2021 9:57am
LoRa based cattle tracking tags made by Moovement are used for bison in the US by Hila Shamon.
Their biggest limitation as I see it is that they need continous connection to the LoRa stations as they do not log locations.
19 February 2022 11:20pm
@alsnothome the SnapperGPS looks sooooooo SWEET!. I am super-duper keen to try it out!