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Research reserves unveils new tower to track migratory wildlife

People looking at at Motus tower at the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve on May 9, 2024.
Jamie Diep
/
KBBI
People looking at at Motus tower at the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve on May 9, 2024.

A new way to track migratory birds in Homer went live earlier this month.

Evan Buckland is the managing director of the Cape Fear Bird Observatory in North Carolina. She and biologist Marae West came to Homer last week to install a Motus tower at the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Buckland said these towers can track migratory animals.

“These are radio receiving towers. They are listening all the time for animals that fly by who are wearing radio tags,” she said.

The towers can detect when an animal with the tag enters its general vicinity, as well as how long it stays in the area. The towers are part of a program run by Birds Canada, a bird conservation organization. There are nearly 2,000 towers all over the world, and the data from every tower can track the migratory patterns of tagged animals.

The two biologists received a year-long grant from the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative program to install Motus towers in estuarine research reserves. Buckland said a variety of animals can be tracked with the towers.

“There's a lot of birds that are tagged,” she said, “but also people tag bats, which is really cool. And then dragonflies are another one. And they are working on making tags that are small enough to put on hummingbirds and butterflies.”

Buckland said the tower also serves as a teaching tool to show people what birds are flying through the area.

While there are Motus towers around the country and world, there are only four other towers in Alaska, in coastal communities along the Gulf of Alaska and Cook Inlet. Buckland hopes more towers are installed in the state in the future.

“There's a lot more of Alaska that needs towers. Alaska is just an amazing wildlife hotspot, and we should be looking at what is around and when,” she said.

Detected animals from the tower can be tracked at motus.org.

Jamie Diep is a reporter/host for KBBI from Portland, Oregon. They joined KBBI right after getting a degree in music and Anthropology from the University of Oregon. They’ve built a strong passion for public radio through their work with OPB in Portland and the Here I Stand Project in Taipei, Taiwan.Jamie covers everything related to Homer and the Kenai Peninsula, and they’re particularly interested in education and environmental reporting. You can reach them at jamie@kbbi.org to send story ideas.
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