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Listening In: Acoustic Monitoring Devices Detect Illegal Hunting and Logging

posted by janrinok on Friday December 15 2017, @06:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the jaguar-and-fries dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Accoustic monitoring to stop poachers:

Populations of large cats such as jaguars and pumas are in global decline due to habitat loss and indiscriminate hunting of them and their prey by humans. Newly developed acoustic loggers are able to record sounds of shotguns and chainsaws, shedding light on the frequency and patterns of illegal exploitation.

The results, presented today at the 'Ecology Across Borders' conference in Ghent, Belgium will help monitor biodiversity and reduce human-wildlife conflicts in tropical forests.

Ecologists from the University of Southampton (UK) and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico) have been studying the presence and distribution of the elusive jaguar and puma in three contiguous regions of protected and unprotected forest in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

Camera traps and analysis of faeces revealed that jaguars and pumas prefer to prey on peccaries, deer and coati—species that are regularly hunted by local communities for their wild meat.

Are jaguars and pumas tastier than peccaries or deer?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 15 2017, @06:27PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Friday December 15 2017, @06:27PM (#610388) Journal

    To this end, the researchers tested prototypes of 'AudioMoth', a low-power open-source acoustic monitoring device. The size of a matchbox and costing as little as US$43 per unit, the loggers can be configured to record sounds of human exploitation (shotguns and chainsaws) as well as target species in order to monitor biodiversity. The team's findings are published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

    Pretty vague, probably not wanting to tip off the locals to what they should look for.

    A better story is here: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/listening-acoustic-monitoring-devices-detect-illegal-hunting-logging/ [britishecologicalsociety.org]
    which included pictures.

    The story wanders around before giving the above little hint of what they actually are building. But no explanation on how it is powered, deployed, serviced, or retrieved.
    Sounds like city folk sneaking into indigenous back yards and expecting to get away with it.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:02PM (#611002)

    i take it that you're more in the market for wearing exotic cat furs than by denying someone the chance to hasten their extinction via capitalism?