On September 17, a gentle rain beat down on the Millikin Ranch. Regardless of the climate, employees from Audubon Rockies, together with Kylie Lamoree and Nick Haddad from Bird Conservancy of the Rockies (BCR), donned their raincoats and went to work on putting in the very first Motus station in jap Wyoming. It is also the primary Motus station to be put in on an Audubon Licensed Fowl-Pleasant ranch within the nation. The ranch is a part of the Audubon Conservation Ranching (ACR) program’s rising community of lands managed to supply very important habitat for grassland birds.
Motus (Latin for motion) is among the world’s largest collaborative wildlife-tracking networks, connecting researchers, practitioners, organizations, and people all in favour of conserving migratory animals. A “Motus station” is basically an automatic radio telemetry station geared up with antennas, an influence supply, and a receiver (Motus Wildlife Monitoring System, 2025). They will decide up tagged animals resembling birds, bats, and even some bugs as much as 15-20 kilometers (9.3-12.4 miles) away! Every tag emits a novel sign, which permits for the simultaneous monitoring of hundreds of people. When a tag is detected at a Motus station, it’s logged with the species, date, stopover length, and tagging web site. This information can then be used to entry data like motion paths, stopover websites, and migration timing.
The info is initially despatched to Birds Canada, which acts as a centralized information hub, for processing and storage. Anybody can entry this unimaginable information at motus.org. You may even see which different stations have detected a selected hen and hint its journey throughout the Motus community. For Audubon Conservation Ranching, information from Motus stations enhances on-the-ground habitat monitoring, which helps confirm how bird-friendly grazing practices profit migratory and resident hen species alike.
Longtime exemplary land stewards, Lisa and Tim Millikin, generously volunteered to host ACR and jap Wyoming’s first Motus station on their working cattle ranch after discussing their significance for monitoring grassland birds. For the previous six years, they’ve been lively individuals within the Audubon Conservation Ranching program, managing their grazing lands to take care of a variety of grass heights and constructions that present nesting and foraging habitat for birds. Tim’s household initially homesteaded their ranch in 1906, and the Millikin household has a protracted historical past of being sturdy advocates for conservation. When requested what Lisa was most enthusiastic about with having a Motus station on their ranch, she mentioned, “I am simply grateful to be working with Audubon Rockies, and what a fantastic alternative it’s to have this monitoring system to see how the birds migrate and to truly know what we’ve round.”
On September 21, simply 4 days after it was put in, the Motus tower on Millikin Ranch recorded its first customer: a Swainson’s Thrush initially tagged in Vancouver, Canada.
Every extra station and tag expands the Motus community’s protection and gives richer information for researchers and organizations. Most of Wyoming lies throughout the Central Flyway, which is a significant migration route for birds. With the set up of this new Motus station, we will start fixing some migration mysteries, as many migratory animals nonetheless have unknown or solely partially identified routes and seasonal habitats. For instance, a Motus station put in in Vancouver detected an American Robin that had traveled all the best way to the Ankeny Nationwide Wildlife Refuge; researchers had been unaware robins traveled that far south till then (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2023).
Past analysis, these stations may also be cost-effective and correct instruments for schooling and public engagement, offering real-world migration information that raises consciousness about migratory species and their conservation wants. As a result of Audubon Licensed Fowl-Pleasant Lands just like the Millikin Ranch present wholesome grasslands wealthy in native crops and bugs, additionally they function essential stopover websites for migrating birds detected by the Motus community.
As of at this time, there are 2,279 Motus stations in 34 totally different nations with 60,088 animals tagged, representing 472 species. With the assistance of BCR and different landowners throughout the Audubon Conservation Ranching program, Audubon Rockies hopes to proceed efforts to guard birds and the locations they want by putting in extra Motus stations sooner or later. Every Motus station expands our understanding of how birds transfer by landscapes and underscores the worth of bird-friendly ranching in retaining these migration pathways intact.
Audubon Rockies is extremely grateful to The Millikins and everybody with Fowl Conservancy of the Rockies for his or her assist in putting in the primary Motus station in jap Wyoming.
