Tracking the movement of animals across landscapes has proved to be a unique challenge for ecologists, as we are often limited by logistical constraints, such as the number of animals that can be captured, battery life of transmitters, and cost of tracking devices. The advent of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has provided a relatively simple and inexpensive technique for tracking animal movements. By tagging animals with small passive integrated transponders and setting up an array of RFID readers and antennas, we can passively and autonomously monitor the movements of animals across the landscape. Our research group has been developing this technology to ask a number of questions about how urbanization, habitat fragmentation, and land-use alteration influences movement patterns in small songbirds. In addition, we have established a network of RFID bird feeders with WiFi capability, allowing for automatic data upload to a local server and web-based processing and visualization on a publicly accessible website, animalnexus.ca. By making these data as well as analysis and visualization tools open to the public, our Hope is to be able to make the study of animal movement accessible to students, researchers, and citizen scientist worldwide.

The Natural Resources & Environmental Studies Institute (NRESi) at UNBC hosts a weekly lecture series at the Prince George campus. Anyone from the university or wider community with interest in the topic area is welcome to attend. Presentations are also made available to remote participants through Livestream and Blue Jeans. Go to http://www.unbc.ca/nres-institute/colloquium-webcasts to view the presentation remotely.

Past NRESi colloquium presentations and special lectures can be viewed on our video archive, available here.