According to a report from the BBC, 5 rhinos in South Africa are have had GPS tracking devices installed in their horns. Here is some from the BBC article:

Five rhinos in South Africa’s North West province have been fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS) device to help protect them from poachers.

The GPS chip is fitted into the rhino’s horn by drilling a small hole in the inert or dead part of the horn.

As well as GPS tracking, the device is equipped with alarm systems to alert game wardens of unusual movement or if a rhino is outside of the park.

The North West Park Board is testing the devices in Mafikeng Game Reserve.

To be honest, I am not sure how this will protect them from the poachers, but at the very least it will allow the authorities to track the horns after they have been taken out. Here is some more from the article about how the authorities are planning on using the device:

“It’s basically a satellite system which connects with the cell phone system and we can monitor the animals on whatever time delay we want,” Rusty Hustler, head of security for North West Parks Board, told BBC News.

“There are a number of alarms that can be programmed: one for excessive movement, so if the rhino starts running, and another that goes off if the rhino sleeps for longer than six hours, which is abnormal.”

So there is some geofencing technology built into this that is supposed to protect the rhinos. Again, I’m not sure what they are thinking the geofencing will do for the rhinos but at least they can do it.

Here is the article from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9116000/9116106.stm

GPS tracking is helping the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) keep track of some threatened giraffes in west Africa. Eight giraffes were fitted with tracking collars in an effort to learn more about these animals movements and to keep them safe.

The reason behind the tracking is sort of a series of strange circumstances. The West African giraffe was put on a red list by the IUCN when it reached a dangerously low 50 giraffes in the late 1990s. Today, there are now around 200 of these beautiful beasts. However, with this boom in population the animals are being forced father and farther away from their “normal” habitat in a search for food.

Getting the GPS tracking device onto the giraffes was anything but easy. Since giraffes cannot have their heart slowed for any period of time greater than half an hour, the fitting crew had to work extremely quickly. After anesthetizing the animal, they have to attach a harness onto the beast with a camouflaged belt.

According to Andy Tutchings, co-founder and trustee of GCF, has said this about attaching tracking device to giraffes:

GPS satellite collaring of giraffes is an adrenaline-filled exercise, but we learned a great deal with our successful efforts in Namibia, and we have the best team working together again for this important effort in Niger.

The aim of the tracking is to figure out where the giraffes are going when they begin to roam for food. Here is how Julian Fennessy puts it:

This data will help us to understand the expanding population better and the extent of their range as they move into new frontiers. In turn, this will enable us to educate the local communities and help them to understand the importance of preserving the giraffe.

The newest GPS tracking effort is going to help researchers better protect these giraffes and make them a viable species once again.

Source: guardian.co.uk

There is a lot that we still do not know about the animal kingdom, but GPS tracking is helping researchers get a better understanding of where animals go. In Wisconsin, recent efforts have focused on elk, deer, and wolves in an effort to better understand the movements of these animals as they go about their lives – but especially when they come into contact with humans, such as during the hunting season.

The way the animals are tracked is like this. A specialize collar is attached to the animal after they have been sedate safely and humanely by someone running the tracking experiment. A very high frequency (VHF) radio signal is emitted by this collar which can be picked up by a hand-held receiver that a researcher carries out into the field on foot, in a truck, a helicopter, or a plane. As they draw closer to the singal they can begin to get a better location on the animal until they come upon it.

Some collars are set to fall off after a specified period of time, after which it sends out its signal to be picked up by the researcher. He then will go out into the field and recover the device which has passively logged the animals movements for the period that the collar was attached to the animal. This type of passive GPS tracking is very important for research.

Nancy Mathews, Professor and Chair of Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, had this to say in a recent interview with Madison.com about the some deer tracking data they uncovered:

Some of the best information we obtained dealt with dispersal patterns and exploratory movements. There’s much more we could learn, but the funding for the project ran out and we’re no longer following the few deer that still have collars.

We also dispelled several myths about deer in this area. No adult males studied dispersed from the study area. Deer that were disturbed during the nine-day gun deer season (2005) moved away some but came back to their home ranges within 24 hours.

While this information might not seem terribly important in the short term, being able to fully understand animals is an important thing for humans to attempt to do. If GPS tracking can assist us in that effort then it should be utilized where money and practical concerns allow.

Source: Madison News