Motus Wildlife Tracking System, Peace Basin Expansion
This project will continue to expand the Motus Wildlife Tracking System to track birds and bats affixed with digitally encoded radio transmitters to help identify critical habitat and effective conservation measures.
Nineteen tracking stations have been installed to date and, this year, more will be added to expand the coverage. In addition to tracking at-risk swallows and other birds, in 2024 the project will also track little brown myotis and northern myotis bats.
This project includes installing stations at schools and other locations to incorporate the Motus Education Program, which builds knowledge about birds, bats, and conservation for grades 7–12.
Update: Seven bat species identified and detected in a Peace Region bat monitoring project.
These findings will help inform the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) that's working to establish baseline information on bats in the face of white nose syndrome, habitat loss, and other threats. The creation of BC Hydro reservoirs, decades ago, flooded habitat and wetlands, reducing roosting and foraging opportunities for bats and other species.
Using bat detectors, this project identified little brown myotis, long-eared myotis, long-legged myotis, silver-haired bat, big brown bat, eastern red bat, and northern myotis bats. That's seven unique species of bats!
This project, led by the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada with the Tsay Keh Dene and Kwadacha First Nations, will continue monitoring the NABat grid cells and expand operations with the deployment of four new bat detectors.
Executive Summary
The Motus Wildlife Tracking System is a global research network dedicated to studying the movements and behaviours of birds, bats, and insects. Motus uses strategically distributed arrays of coordinated automated radio-telemetry receiver stations to detect animals marked with uniquely coded radio-transmitters. These radio-transmitters emit signals at shared frequencies and can be detected by all Motus receiver stations in the system, allowing researchers to track animals at local to hemispheric scales.
The Peace Region in northeastern British Columbia represents an important intersection between the Central and Western Flyways and tracking migration routes in the region could inform conservation planning for some migratory birds. Further, the boreal forest provides important breeding habitat for many songbirds. Finally, the detection of white-nose syndrome in British Columbia now threatens bat populations and more data on bat ecology in the region could provide valuable information for conservation planning and management.
This project, Motus Wildlife Tracking System: Peace Basin Expansion, is in alignment with Action 10 of the Peace Region Riparian and Wetland Action Plan: “identify and prioritize habitat-based actions for priority bird species” under Sub-Objective 4: “maximize the population viability of priority riparian and wetland species”. Additionally, this project aligns with Action 5 of the Peace Region Uplands Action Plan: “research bat populations, distribution, and identify important habitat features” under Sub-Objective 3: “maximize the population viability of bats”. Using the regional array of Motus stations built under this project in northeastern British Columbia, we have tracked the migration routes of White-throated Sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis), Bank Swallows (Riparia riparia), and conducted preliminary local tracking of at-risk bats (Myotis sp.). The Peace Region array and the broader Motus network have potential to support projects tracking other species, including Northern Saw-whet Owls (Aegolius acadicus), Connecticut Warblers (Oporornis agilis), and Silver-haired Bats (Lasionycteris noctivagans).
In Year 4, we focused project efforts within Tsay Keh Dene Core Territory and expanded Motus station coverage in the region. We worked with Tsay Keh Dene Nation and other regional collaborators to install two new full-sized Motus stations. There are now 19 active stations across northeastern British Columbia, from Prince George to Tsay Keh Dene to Dawson Creek. We partnered with Environment and Climate Change Canada and Chu Cho Environmental to install four temporary mini Motus stations at wetlands to monitor roosting and foraging behaviours of Bank Swallows and bat species. We located four White-throated Sparrows previously tagged in 2023. Collaborators deployed three Motus tags on Myotis sp. at wetlands near Tsay Keh Dene. We completed boat-based Bank Swallow colony surveys along the Williston Reservoir, Ingenika River, and Ospika Bay to identify active colonies and candidate tagging sites. Bank Swallow tagging was postponed in Year 4 due to the lead tagger and permit holder becoming ill the day before fieldwork, but has been rescheduled for Year 5.
We have established a substantial Motus network in the Peace Region over the last four years. We plan to continue engaging with the research community to stimulate local tagging projects using the Motus network so that the system can be leveraged to maximize the potential of research efforts and for conservation.