Technology is changing faster than Martha Stewart’s Christmas plans. While I’ve written often regarding the implications of the electronic world — GPS, cell phones, email and the Internet — these advancements are not limited to those who recreate beyond their computer terminal. Fisheries and wildlife managers alike are using the latest technology.
Don’t believe me? Across the United States conservation officers are implementing “black berry” satellite technology. Linking to orbiting satellites, wardens are armed with the capability of verifying information from the middle of nowhere.
For instance, an officer is told by a hunter during a field check that he has misplaced his license. By linking through a handheld personal data assistant, or PDA, the warden can easily verify the claim. With this latest technology, officers can accelerate a process that formerly required written documentation and paging through paper licensing data, or hoping their cell phone was able to connect to verify the hunter’s claim via mobile phone. Either way, utilizing this technology makes work efficient for officers and speeds hunters through field checks.
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Traditional game checks will be a thing of the past
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It’s all part of the inevitable movement towards total electronic licensing. With the availability of licensing via the internet – and public libraries allowing free internet access – it’s hard to imagine a hunter taking a trip to the library rather than the gas station, sporting goods store or other venues where licenses were purchased for years. Fear not as those outlets too are beginning to offer hunting and fishing licenses on the internet.
Beyond the advances for administration, visualize the impact the electronic age is providing scientists. Margi Coyle, a scientist studying golden eagles in the badlands in western North Dakota, is using high-tech gadgetry to garner cutting edge data on a typically hard-to-study bird. In the past, radio-collared eagles required the scientist to spend hours simply searching for a signal to approximate the location of the birds. Aircraft were utilized to locate signals generated only several miles or even less depending on the terrain. Entire days and weeks could be exhausted doing little more than searching for the beeping signal of a collared bird.
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Running GPS and Databases Live in the Field
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Fast forward to today’s use of satellite-tracked collars, which pinpoint exact hourly GPS coordinates – everyday, all day, year-round. This same technology uses GPS, a laptop computer and camera to document nests and significant migration stops for fledging young eagles.
In years past, forests of paper were shuffled and scattered as researchers searched through stacks of maps and scrambled to locate way points to coordinate location of nests, birds and other data. Now the computer, camera, and GPS pinpoint precise times, locations and terrain of studied eagles. It’s much more tree friendly.
This technology is not just aiding research. GIS mapping is producing contour maps of lakes, allowing fisheries managers a more accurate look at waters than ever dreamed possible. The maps will help in the management of North Dakota’s fisheries, while providing anglers with a better picture of what’s hidden beneath their boats – a sunken island, rocky point, the next fishing hotspot.
This is just a small sample of how technology is influencing those fish and wildlife managers who at times over the years, had to question the accuracy of their data.
The scary part of all this, thanks to web cams and sensors, is the ability to view wildlife management areas, scroll water chemistry readouts and whatever else – without leaving the office. Most wildlife managers would prefer less time behind the computer and more time in the wild.
Leier is a biologist with the Game and Fish Dept. He can be reached via email: dleier@state.nd.us
Photo credits to the ND Game and Fish Department
