Southeast Volusia Audubon Society Installs New Motus Station

Yearly, hundreds of thousands of birds migrate by way of Florida on their solution to northern breeding hotspots or southern wintering grounds. Defending birds and the locations they want whereas they undertake these heroic journeys requires an in depth understanding of the place and after they transfer. However how can we achieve that data? Along with reported observations and chicken bands, advances in know-how imply that the birds themselves can carry tiny radio tags, exhibiting us their migration patterns over time. A brand new monitoring station in New Smyrna Seashore run by Southeast Volusia Audubon Society (SEVAS) and hosted by the Marine Discovery Heart (MDC) goals to unravel a regional piece of the migration puzzle.

How Does It Work?

Nationwide Audubon Society installs Motus Wildlife Monitoring Stations as a part of its conservation science program. Specialised antennae talk with tiny transmitters that researchers affix to birds or different wildlife. If the tagged animals’ migratory path crosses inside twelve miles of the receiving station, it information information from the tag to a database that’s accessible in near-real time. This system works to determine places that migrating birds want for survival, facilitating the prioritization of these places for conservation.

The Motus community is spreading shortly throughout the hemisphere, increasing what we learn about migratory chicken connections — and the way birds join us with one another.

“The Motus community is overseen by a crew on the nonprofit Birds Canada together with longtime migration scientist Stu Mackenzie, who helped pioneer the system with Acadia College researchers within the early 2010s,” explains Alex Tey in an article for Audubon Magazine on the global Motus network.

“Funds for the SEVAS Motus station had been raised by way of particular person donations to the chapter’s First Annual Birdathon,” says Birdathon Chair Robert Merideth. “We additionally obtained in-kind assist from MDC, the American Chicken Conservancy (they put in the tower), and New Smyrna Seashore Utilities.” 

“Quickly, Motus will carry chicken migration to life with real-time information, interactive graphics, and SEVAS packages that monitor the tales of particular person birds and species,” provides Motus Undertaking Chair John Kendall.

Into the Future

The SEVAS tower joins greater than a dozen Motus stations run by Audubon and chapters, together with a station at Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples.

We observe birds to our work — and so they aren’t constrained by the arbitrary boundaries of cities, states, and nations. In consequence, a important factor of Audubon’s habitat conservation purpose entails strengthening the ties between the locations birds want throughout the hemisphere. Working along with chapters and different nonprofit companions, Audubon makes use of the Motus community to review areas related by migration so we are able to preserve and restore them now and into the longer term.