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High tech game conservation Technology serves human ends. What we call progress has often meant suffering and privation for animals. Think of gunpowder. Think of vivisection. But there is a small pocket of people who are using technology to preserve and protect our natural heritage.
Game reserves exist to learn about animals as well as conserve them. That means studying the animal in its natural environment as unobtrusively as possible.
Radio collars have been used for many years to keep track of wild game. It's called radio-telemetry. Big cats, such as lions, are collared with powerful transmitters, allowing game rangers to shadow their movements. But radio collars have their limitations. As in other fields, satellite technology is replacing microwave radio signals. By attaching collars that are satellite-linked, game rangers can follow individuals over vast distances, without the need for terrestrial relay stations. Migration patterns can now be mapped with a degree of accuracy that was not possible before. "GPS (Global Positioning System) technology really has made an enormous impact on biological research, because a little unit that you hold in your hand can tell you exactly latitude, longitude and in terms of altitude where you are any time that you are busy making your observations," explains Dr McKenzie. "That uses satellites that are up in points in the sky and at each time your unit should have two, three or four satellites within its view so to speak and it uses the position of those satellites to calculate its own position now very accurately within a few metres".
The SPCA have introduced this technology to keep tabs on strays. "The purpose of the microchip is to try and identify where the animal comes from," says Christine Venter from the SPCA . "We can pick up the owners' details, provided they haven't changed address and the telephone number hasn't changed, so we can locate the original owners of the dog". The problem with this technology is that it's passive - microchip transponders carry information about the individual, but don't transmit a live signal. It sounds old-fashioned, but the biggest problem is the size of the battery.
But what of the future? The most sophisticated "field instrument" is also the oldest - the Bushman tracker. The latest technology results from a convergence of digital computing with the traditional skills of the Khoisan. It's called the Palm-Pilot - a hand-held computer that allows the tracker to input field data, such as spoor and herd numbers. Using a pen, the tracker chooses from a range of icons that represent the animal he is stalking.
Says Louis Liebenberg, Cybertracker Inventor: "Essentially what I am hoping to achieve with a Cybertracker System is to take what could be the older science going back hundreds of thousands of years at the very time that it is dying out and to revitalise it into a modern science that could have far reaching implications for environmental conservation. One can even visualise having trackers in national parks all over the globe, putting their data onto the Internet which would enable you to monitor the entire global echo system almost an a daily basis".
When it comes to nature, technology can be as wild, or as civilized, as the animals that use it. That includes us!
Contacts
Christine Venter. Assistant Kennel Supervisor
Louis Liebenberg. Chief Executive Director |
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Contents and images © 1998 All rights reserved |
"In Touch" talked to Dr Andrew McKenzie, MD at WildNetAfrica.com. "The kind of research that one has been able to do, the questions that one can answer, conservation programs that one can put into place as the result of this technology is enormous and obviously we haven't seen the end of it yet," says Dr McKenzie. "When we get to being able to refine animals' movements with GPS units in every single collar and that sort of thing, we will really get down to a refine understanding of how animals behave and that ultimately translates into your effectiveness in conserving them. You can't conserve them if you don't understand them, and technology has brought us leaps forward in that....
Dr McKenzie continues: "When you are tracking different kinds of animals it is obviously their behaviour that determines mostly what your experience is going to be. Lions are the most boring thing because they tend to lay around for about 18 hours of the day; so it is terrible easy, but when they get on the move then you have to stay with them because now they are hunting and on the move and this is where the technology really helps you to stay with them. Small animals tend to be a lot more active and there you need that technology ? almost all the time."
But collars and handsets may be on the way out. The next generation of devices will be a lot smaller - microchips embedded beneath the skin.
Poachers have already fallen foul of microchip technology. By embedding chips in rhino horns, rangers can track poaching syndicates all the way to the polluting source - the buyer. Unfortunately, this kind of technology is expensive. Game reserves rely on subsidies or grants to pay for such equipment. "When it comes to radio tracking, unfortunately the cost is related to the size of the equipment that you put on the animal," says Dr Andrew McKenzie. "The smaller it gets the higher the technology and the more expensive it is going to become".
The computer is linked to a Global Positioning System, that records the exact location every time the tracker makes an entry. When the tracker returns to camp, he simply downloads all of his observations onto a larger computer. The result is a comprehensive database that shows the movement and behaviour of individual animals.
The beauty of the system is that it's so simple. Even though the tracker might be illiterate, he can still utilize the computer to augment his skills. By taking a step back from the Earth in the form of satellites, and a step towards it, in the form of under-the-skin microchips, conservationists are keeping track of our world.