Researchers Deplete Budget When Tracking Chips on Migrating Eagles Start Sending Foreign SMSes

The higher service charge levied by text messages sent from roaming zones depleted the project's budget.

By Agence France-Presse | Updated: 28 October 2019 16:49 IST

Researchers Deplete Budget When Tracking Chips on Migrating Eagles Start Sending Foreign SMSes

Photo Credit: Instagram / Birds_NSK

Russian scientists were tracking migrating eagles that wandered into Iran

Highlights

Steppe eagles were transmitting coordinates via Russian mobile number
The birds ended up wandering into a roaming zone in Iran
Scientists launched a campaign called "Top up the eagle's mobile"

Russian scientists tracking migrating eagles were forced to start a crowdfunding campaign after their birds wandered into Iran and foreign text messages from their tracking devices depleted the project's budget.

Scientists rang the alarm earlier this month when several endangered steppe eagles transmitting coordinates via Russian mobile numbers wandered into the roaming zone after spending the summer in an area without mobile coverage.

"These beasts were out of range in Kazakhstan all summer and now once they reached the super expensive Iran and Pakistan, they are spewing out hundreds of text messages with their locations," wrote Igor Karyakin of the Russian Raptors Research and Conservation Network.

Scientists this week launched a campaign called "Top up the eagle's mobile" to keep the research going with the public's help after taking out a loan to pay for the text messages costing RUB 49 each (roughly Rs. 54) instead of the usual price of RUB 2 (roughly Rs. 2) to RUB 15 (roughly Rs. 17).

"They really left us penniless, we had to take out a loan to feed the tracker device," Karyakin wrote Friday. Bird lovers, however, have already contributed enough to last through the year.

"People are still sending money so there is hope we can keep the eagle sim cards running until they come back from their faraway journeys in early summer to Russia, where mobile connectivity is not so expensive," he wrote.

Steppe eagles breed in southern Russia and Kazakhstan, and spend their winter in Africa and India.

They have experienced rapid decline due to the spread of farming land across their territory and are vulnerable to wind turbines, according to Bird Life International.

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