Read more about this series here.

In the last of my articles looking into how people decide on biologging technology, I wanted to explore DIY biologgers and how people settle on them as solutions. I spoke with Annkathrin Sharp, Eastern Atlantic Islands Programme Officer at Fauna & Flora, about her experiences working on a biologging project and how the solution for her project was to use SnapperGPS. 

The project goals

Annkathrin was involved in a project funded by the Darwin Initiative and implemented in partnership with NGO Associação Biflores, aimed at reducing the impacts of free grazing on threatened and endemic plant species on Brava island in the Cabo Verde archipelago. 

The island's primary livestock (goats) are allowed to graze unattended and there was a need to understand what effect this was having on the native plant species. Mapping the goats' movements while grazing in combination with orthomosaics of the island’s vegetation cover was considered a good way to explore this effect. Understanding their movements was going to need some form of tracker. 

“I knew what the budget was, I knew what the aim was… I started reading scientific papers that had been published in things like Oryx, Conservation or more tech-y journals and getting a sense of how movement ecology approaches used biologging tech.”

No one within the project had prior experience with biologging studies, so Annkathrin’s first step was to research the animal telemetry field. She looked into a number of papers that had tracked livestock movements, trying to isolate the technology they had used and establish wether it was suitable for her project.

She also began reaching out to other members of Fauna & Flora who had worked with biologgers to see what tech they had used and if they could help her decide. The response she got from many of them was that the place to go for tech solutions was WILDLABS. Turning to there she posted asking if any one had any recommendations.

Choosing the tags

Using this approach and the study goals she was able to come up with a list of requirements for her collars. Annkathrin needed something that had coverage for the area and was lightweight enough for the goats to carry. In order to accurately track where the goats were grazing they needed to record locations frequently. Each farmer had between 10-30 goats and there would need to be enough collars to map the herd’s movement.  Any solution was also going to need to be within the project’s budget.

The problems she ran into were that network coverage of the area was patchy, as it was a mountainous region, on a remote island. This eliminated the option of using a LoRa network or GSM collars. Many conventional livestock collars include live tracking for safety of livestock, which was not only unnecessary for this project but also increased the price beyond budget.

“Because it's such a changing and dynamic space, it’s an extra consideration that you have to take, while if you’re doing BRUVS [Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems] , you just need to make sure the go-pro works, it’s a bit different. So it felt like a lot of information to take in but  [WILDLABS] was also really helpful in broadening my understanding of what the different options were and being able to discount them relatively quickly either for price, coverage or suitability for the project activities. As part of that I was asking questions and providing more specific information about what we needed them for, and I got a reply from someone who said 'You should probably look into this giveaway which is happening through the Arribada Initiative with Oxford University; they have developed these Snapper GPS receivers which are super lightweight and should work in Cape Verde.” 

DIY Biologgers

Arribada Initiative is part of the growing trend in the movement ecology space of DIY biologgers. As DIY biologgers are often cheaper and offer more customisable options for researchers, to Annkathrin, it seemed the perfect nexus of affordable, user-friendly and accessible to fit the goals of the project.

Annkathrin was able to get ten GPS receivers through Jonas Beuchert and Alex Rogers of Oxford University’s SnapperGPS team through their giveaway in partnership with the Arribada Initiative. From there she basically received a crash course in how to assemble a biologger, as the battery, casing, circuit board and the actual collars themselves needed to be sourced, purchased and then MacGyvered together to form a working biologger.

This was no easy feat to accomplish, especially as they needed to not only figure out how to assemble the receivers, they also needed to make sure this could be accomplished by the project partners in-country. Jonas from the SnapperGPS team was especially helpful in making sure they were able to correctly fit everything together.

Eventually her team were able to both successfully make a collar and write a detailed instruction manual for the project partners. This and all the necessary equipment was sent to Cape Verde to begin data collection. Once there the project partners were able to turn all ten of the receivers into biologgers. They identified the lead goats of the herd and collared them to get a detailed picture of where the herd was grazing. 

How did it go?

They ended up with a fix rate of three minutes and the collars would record data for a period of three hours. The data from the collars was stored on board and this meant that the data could be easily uploaded when the collars were removed and the batteries changed. As it was for livestock the collars could be easily taken on and off the animals. 

While they did have initial teething problems, with fixes in odd places and some of the collars not being assembled correctly, the support they received from Arribada was incredible and the tech worked well to fulfil the aims of the project. The success of the devices has even meant Associação Biflores have continued to be used in tracking the movements of different goat herds on the island!

Annkathrin’s approach to finding the tech solutions for her project was through collaboration and word of mouth. When I asked her to summarise her process for finding the tech and how she thought that WILDLABS developing the Inventory could benefit conservationists, she said:

“Just a final thought – as a programme officer working on both terrestrial and marine projects with 7 partner organisations in two countries comprising twelve islands, I feel like I have to have a jack-of-all-trades approach to supporting project design and implementation, where I’m not an in-depth expert in any particular technology or approach, but have to make sure I’m informed enough to make decisions or advise on methods that are appropriate to project needs, partner capacity, and the constraints of remote island contexts. This makes researching the different options for particular needs, like biologging, fairly challenging as someone new to the subject, and while in my case having support and input from more experienced people on WILDLABS was invaluable, I think some kind of inventory would have been incredibly useful and I think it would make for a fantastic decision-making tool.”

With thanks to Annkathrin Sharp for speaking to me about her experiences.

Photo credits: Associação Biflores

Series Conclusions

Throughout this series, we have examined multiple different cases across different taxa, study goals and organisations. All of our case studies have had to navigate through the different needs and limitations of their projects with varying degrees of difficulty. All the projects have been able to find a good tech solution for their projects through collaboration with other experts. The need to know tech is reliable before deployment means that having people you can reach out for their experiences is invaluable . 

However, while collaboration is clearly a key aspect to choosing biologging tech, there are flaws to this approach. As we saw with the black-capped petrel project, it means that your biologger options are limited by the scope of your network. It also means that those without connections in the movement ecology space can be left in the dark about the reliability of their tech. 

With so much information about biologging being restricted to specific researchers, it is important to create accessible spaces where people can share their experiences using different conservation technology. We are now looking for people to sign up to the beta for the Inventory. This project is working to build a dynamic, collaborative, wiki-inspired database of conservation technology. The goal of which is to become a place where conservationists can discover what technology is available for their work, how it is being used by others around the world, and what our conservation tech community would recommend. 

I hope you have enjoyed this series and please sign up to the beta for the Inventory to leave reviews on any of the tech you have used and help others find the right biologgers for their project.