Observing the creatures of the wild has never been easier, thanks to the various technological innovations in this regard.
The applications of modern scientific technology in biological sciences around the world has made it possible to monitor ecosystem trends and biological entities through a number of methods involving devices that provide details, information and images for subsequent interpretation, PTV reported.
A considerable effort has been devoted to developing modern types of systems and methods to monitor areas in wilderness and fauna that help formulate management protocols. For species that are secretive, nocturnal and elusive, these techniques serve as tool for providing accurate information.
Radio transmitters have been used in research studies over the last 10 years to gain additional information about avian biology that cannot be obtained with leg bands or other methods. In telemetry technology, the satellite-linked transmitters are attached to the body of the animal or bird that help monitor the species regarding annual survival, territoriality, and behavioural ecology and migration.
For short studies and researches, individual animals are fitted with instrumentation ranging from simple tags to cameras, GPS packages and transceivers to provide position and other basic information like habitats and home-range descriptions for which specific software have been developed.
The integration of GPS technology has provided broad-based information. Radio collar, an electronic device for tracking the tagged animal, helps to monitor its location, habitat preferences, movement and behaviour in the wild, which is otherwise very difficult and time- consuming. Radio collars with GPS loggers for storing data in a sequential order, helps in providing a gallery of information over time and is receptive of satellite signals.
In this context, the International Snow Leopard Trust, (ISLT) with collaboration with Wildlife Department of the North-West Frontier Province has been succussful to radio collar the first-ever female snow leopard in Pakistan at the Chitral Gol National Park in distric Chitral, which would help get valuable information about the endangered animal.
Biologists use a mark-recapture technique in which an animal is captured and physically marked or tagged with a specific identification number. The same animal when recaptured after a period of study provides valuable information. Currently, a number of electronic tags are used for monitoring purposes in the wild. There are compact implants known as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, either passive or active, which facilitate wildlife identification by attaching or inserting the microchip into a species of interest at any subsequent monitoring point.
Based on the nocturnal behaviour of many wild species, the use of the night visions is also being used to document the species ecological behaviour for the effective management.
Generally, the echolocation calls that bats emit are of high frequency, beyond the audibility of the human beings. For this purpose, there are bat detectors to record the echo location calls of bats in the flight activity during night that help in their study and monitoring. Animal ultrasounds can also be studied by using detectors that translate these sounds to sonic. Sonograms processed with Sonobat software can reveal the attributes and aid in discriminating species and other subtle differences of bat echolocation calls.
Recently, biologists have begun to monitor the wild population of floral and faunal diversity with use of unattended video cameras in wilderness, where a bait or lure is placed to attract the animal. The motion and body heat triggers the camera sensor to take video clips. For this, 35mm cameras of either single sensor or dual sensor are used in addition to the line triggered system cameras. The former, used for winter surveys, works based on the transmitter and receiver mechanism while the latter, used in the spring, involves a wire mechanism that trigger the shutter as the animal touches the wire.
Currently, natural resources like forests and wildlife are being monitored through a Geographic Information System (GIS), which provides imageries of the area in terms of type, quality and extent of the natural resources over a certain period of time. GIS enables biologists and conservationists to record the movement of wild animals through the rugged mountains and also provide information about their behaviour, breeding, migration, longevity, food preferences in different seasons and the climate they are living in.
The GIS technology, as an expansion of cartographic science, has enhanced the efficiency and analytic power of traditional mapping.