What are the best practices for using GPS in wildlife conservation?

Choosing the right device should be primarily driven by the species that you are going to monitor, and how that species interacts with its physical environment. Small migratory bird species need smaller devices that will not impede their flight, or add unnecessary weight. For larger animals such as African Elephant, or White Rhinoceros, bear in mind that they rub, scratch and often wallow in mud and water on a daily basis, which could cover, or damage the device. Thus a GPS, or Data Logger must be fit for purpose.

-Ethical tagging with non-invasive, lightweight GPS devices. -Ensure data accuracy and account for environmental factors. -Use long-lasting batteries to minimize disturbances. -Tailor methods to species-specific behaviors and habitats. -Integrate remote sensing technologies for comprehensive insights. -Collaborate with local communities for holistic conservation efforts. -Address privacy concerns and implement data security measures. -Provide training and build local capacity for wildlife monitoring. -Engage in adaptive management, adjusting protocols as needed. -Communicate findings to raise public awareness and support.

Best practices for using GPS in wildlife conservation include accurately tagging animals with GPS collars or tags, ensuring ethical handling and welfare of wildlife during tagging, collecting location data at appropriate intervals to balance accuracy and battery life, analyzing movement patterns to understand habitat use and behavior, sharing data transparently with relevant stakeholders, and integrating GPS data with other sources such as remote sensing and population surveys for comprehensive conservation planning and management.

Best practices for GPS use in wildlife conservation involve choosing suitable devices, ensuring proper fitting to minimize disruption to animals, implementing robust data management, collaborating with local stakeholders, and continually monitoring and evaluating projects for effectiveness and ethical considerations.

Pay attention to power consumption. Think through whether you need real time results or if a data logger will suffice. A data logger conserves power because it doesn't need to power its communication.

Whether the technology needs batteries and how complex the maintenance is. It is these aspects that are often overlooked at the time of the initial investment.

When the GPS is switched on, GPS cameras use much more energy. We solved these power issues by providing portable batteries and portable solar chargers for the Indigenous forest guardians.

Ensure that the GPS has fully updated firmware before it is deployed. Also take time to test it and understand its limitations, which could include onboard memory, the fix rate and always take the species behaviour profile into account. For example Rhino's often wallow in large bodies of water and mud, which can cause a variety of issues for GPS's and data loggers. YOu should expect "dead" GPS dependent on the behaviour of your species.

Part of our best practice is that the Indigenous forest guardians actually use several GPS devices, also a normal GPS, next to GPS cameras, and an app of environmental law enforcment. So there are several GPS devices. A third team member of the Indigenous forest guardians films the GPS screens and GPS locations, to remove/limit doubts about the GPS location and the illegality of people or logging trucks being illegally present inside Indigenous Territories.

Data validation should be triangulated by conducting control tests. Dependent on the device and its primary placement (on the back of a bird), or possibly carried by a Park Ranger, they should be calibrated to ensure their accuracy.

One should focus on the low hanging fruit, such as Indigenous Territories in Brazil. Any person or machine/truck that is inside a Brazilian Indigenous Territory without explicit permission of the leadership (normally the Chief) is illegally present. A GPS referenced picture is enough evidence to proof the illegality. Besides that, the forest guardians have a detailed (GPS) report about their surveillance and routes, so there is little doubt about the validity of data. This is not the major issue. Security is.

Sharing the data can be very dangerous, as there is quite some corruption in environmental and forest/wildlife law enforcement. It can put the life of nature defenders who collect proof in danger. Some NGOs, with little crime and criminal justice expertise, make serious mistakes here. One should first do a thorough good governance and anti corruption assessment, to distinguish trustworthy law enforcement institutions and people from those who cannot be trusted, or not really. Best is to work with those that do the anti corruption interventions, but it takes time to gain trust. However, this time investment is worth it and necessary.

Be clear on the main objective, and whether precision (eg. GPS) is really required, if simpler tools might suffice. Esp. true working on community-level projects or long-term enforcement (eg. detecting patterns of improper pesticide use reported by the public). Guarding a protected area with limited personnel, for example, can be "mapped" to adequately report important trends w/out GPS: limited number of routes (eg. only need to know where to wait to effect interventions), or specific times (eg. knowing illegal fishing occurs in "the SW quadrant the day before payday", so's to improve officers' probability of effecting contacts). As with cards, you can improve chances w/out "perfect" data (eg. probability of the cards you need appearing).

If using GPS devices and/or data to assist environmental law enforcement, ensure that the devices, data, evidence, intelligence etc gathered can be used under the judicial system and laws of the country. You will also need to make sure that the officials using the devices and information are eligible to testify in court. Different countries have different laws about what can be presented and who can present it.

Adhere to ethical guidelines and best practices for wildlife research and conservation. Minimize disturbance to wildlife, respect private property rights, obtain necessary permits and permissions, and prioritize safety for both humans and wildlife during fieldwork.