The newly released paper on the performance of satellite telemetry in terrestrial wildlife research lead by Maarten Hofman explores why do GPS collars in wildlife research sometimes work and sometimes not. The study, where our team was involved, analyzes data from over 3,000 devices deployed on 62 terrestrial species in 167 projects worldwide. The species, the environment and the unit characteristics affected collar performance. Almost half of the unit deployments ended prematurely, half of them due to technical failure. Companies should further work on improving the technology.
Paper available in the PLOS One https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216223