Motus 

The Motus Wildlife Tracking System (Motus), a program of Birds Canada, is an international collaborative research network that uses coordinated automated radio telemetry to facilitate impactful and cost-effective research and education on the ecology and conservation of migratory animals.

The Uihlein Foundation became a Motus network partner in 2023, adding a station at Uihlein Farm that tracks small flying organisms, but mainly birds. The Uihlein Farm tracking station is one of 2,178 receiver stations in 34 countries. 

Collectively, the Motus stations worldwide,  track over 400 species of tagged animals including bats, raptors, songbirds, butterflies, seabirds, and even some dragonflies. The goal is to create a collaborative network for all researchers monitoring flying animals that would normally be too small to track. Motus receiver stations all over the world pick up “pings” from any radio-tagged birds that fly past and then send the data collected from the VHF Nanotag transmitters to a shared database that are then made available for public education purposes. The data collected by Motus is revolutionizing understanding of migratory animals and helps with conservation efforts, study of species at risk, environmental assessment and mitigation project planning, and many other continental conservation efforts.

For more information about Motus, click here.