Post provided by FRANCES E. BUDERMAN

Animal Movement

218 Canada lynx were reintroduced to the San Juan Mountains between 1999 and 2006 with VHF/Argos collars. © Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Animal movement is a driving factor underlying many ecological processes including disease transmission, extinction risk and range shifts. Understanding why, when and how animals traverse a landscape can provide much needed information for landscape-level conservation and management practices.

The theoretical underpinnings for modelling animal movement were developed about seventy years ago. Technological developments followed, with radio-collars initially deployed on large mammals such as grizzly bears and elk. We can now monitor animal movement of a wide variety of species, including those as small as a honeybee, at an unprecedented temporal and spatial scale.

However, location-based data sets are often time consuming and costly to collect. For many species, especially those that are rare and elusive, pre-existing data sets may be the only viable data source to inform management decisions. Continue reading →