WP1 REVISED: The Fate of One-Sided Relationship
“Three… two…one.” A big splash suddenly filled up the vast ocean: Beebong, which suffered seventeen years of performing dolphin shows, finally met the seas of Jeju Island. I exclaimed, “Beebong, enjoy your freedom!”
It was the next day, but we could not find Beebong anywhere; its GPS tag had fallen off. Coincidentally or not, every time the Korean research team released a captive dolphin on the coast of Jeju Island, its GPS tracker fell off in a few hours or days.
Although invasive monitoring methods, including GPS collars, have been filling humans’ vast knowledge gap on wildlife, many ecologists have failed to create as close relationships with wildlife as they desired due to technological limits, high cost, small sample size, and restricted movement. After all, there was a particular gap between animals and humans that could not be narrowed anymore — perhaps a necessary boundary between living things. Since location-tracking technology is still an effective tool for designing wildlife conservation projects, I would like to discuss the way we can incorporate GPS technology into the proper animal-human relationship. Where and how should we draw the line?
Egocentrism, anthropocentrism, and biocentrism — the appropriate man-nature relationship has been controversial and divergent throughout history. However, the current unusual circumstance should be taken into consideration when setting the ethical standards for GPS-involved projects: the climate crisis. It is an urgent issue, and location-tracking technologies are essential tools for wildlife conservation that relieve the impact of anthropogenic stressors. Therefore, to quickly overcome this crisis, humans should take a more pragmatic and straightforward approach than a deontological approach. It is more reasonable to temporarily shift the focus from obligation and moral values to outcomes and profits concerned with climate change. Both subjects — humans and animals — must benefit from the particular boundary we adopt; this straightforward standard provides us with efficiency and efficacy.
Comparing the current advantages of each side, we humans are currently enjoying countless opportunities from employing current GPS technology. Through the lens of GPS trackers, we gain deep insights into animal behavior, migration patterns, and habitat preferences, satisfying our innate scientific curiosity about the natural world. Above all, the information substantially supports humans in identifying effective conservation strategies and protecting endangered species.
Also, GPS technology provided great convenience. As an intern at a marine animal research organization, I would follow the senior researchers taking millions of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins’ pictures at Jeju Island for hours under the scorching sun. Back at the research center, I had to analyze thousands of photos and identify every dolphin among 120 of them manually. Compared to this traditional noninvasive monitoring method, GPS technology offered ecologists the freedom from the substantial time investment of manually identifying the location and behavior of each animal.
Now, what profits do animals earn from the recent GPS wildlife system? In the long term, wildlife could relish a better-preserved environment with GPS data-driven conservation projects. Nevertheless, they simultaneously undergo a severe loss: a lack of freedom and privacy. Although there is a rule that the instrument’s mass must not exceed 5% (or 3%), this approach is way too simplistic. Casper mentioned, “For example, transmitter weights based on a fixed percentage of body weight affect the flight characteristics of large birds more than those of small birds because they have proportionally less surplus power.” (Casper, 2006) Not only mass but buoyancy, color, acoustic frequency, or light spectra of the device restrict their normal movement, threatening the animals’ health and lifestyles.
The recent benefits of surveillance technologies are explicitly oriented toward humans’ well-being and priorities. Although it is challenging to quantify and equalize each side’s profit and loss precisely, at least we should make efforts to seek a balance.
Minimizing unnecessary invasions would be the most fundamental step to achieving that goal. Several checkpoints could filter out the unnecessary and impractical utilization of GPS collars. One of the first checkpoints is to determine the type of data scale suitable for the research objective. Some ecologists said that there is an overemphasis on the importance of fine-scale data, which leads to the overuse of GPS technology. “In the case of threatened woodland caribou declines, the bulk of research strongly suggests declines are caused by large spacial scale anthropogenic disturbance that has increased predation.” (Hebblewhite & Haydon, 2010) While fine-scale knowledge often helps us solve critical conservation questions, it is not necessarily true in all types of research.
In a similar vein, the use of GPS collars should be purposeful. Humans should not utilize GPS collars for the simple reason that modern technology just allows them to do so. Instead, specific, thoughtful conservation missions should be the starting point for determining the use of GPS. It is mandatory that technologies be aligned with positive societal values and purposes that harness benefits for both humans and animals.
The assessment of whether the science project teams have sufficient funds and expertise to capture animals and analyze complex environmental data in advance will also prevent unrealistic and impractical GPS deployments. Hebblewhite and his colleagues estimated that collecting the GPS data of 30 animals requires minimum costs ranging from USD $36,000 to $240,000 for lower and upper-end GPS units, respectively. (Hebblewhite et al., 2014) It is certain that not all research organizations have access to this highly expensive technology. They should thus avoid reckless and hasty deployments, which can not only threaten the individual animal’s life and freedom but can even cause cascading effects on our entire ecosystem.
Beyond undergoing these cautious checkpoints, we should focus on developing less invasive location-tracking methods. There is a necessity to enhance the battery life and decrease the weight of the battery to minimize the physical burden on wildlife and the close contact that occurs during the replacement of the battery. The solar-powered animal tracker could be a breakthrough for this mission. Hart tested the precision and performance of a 180-gram solar-powered GPS device for terrestrial herbivores, producing high fix acquisition success rates, moderate precision errors, and consistently stable voltage. (Hart et al., 2020) Adapting innovative battery technologies to GPS collars will alleviate the physical strain on wildlife.
Advancing the drop-off technique holds great importance as well to reduce animals’ stress. Drop-offs enable ecologists to detach the GPS collars remotely, eliminating the need for physical recaptures and reducing substantial research costs. However, successful drop-offs are not guaranteed based on the current technology level. “First, as the greatest room for improvement across GPS collars lies in drop-off functionality, we argue that it is essential that all GPS collars be fitted with biodegradable weak links prior to placing them on the animals.” (Dore et al., 2020) Developments of biodegradable weak links will ensure that the collars are not attached infinitely, regardless of drop-off failure or success, enhancing overall animal welfare. These efforts of conducting checkpoints and developing novel technologies will help us seek the essential balance between the benefits of humans and animals when deploying GPS technologies.
Whereas location-tracking technology was supposed to lead to close relationships with wildlife, humans ended up facing barriers that blocked intimacy. These outcomes encourage humans to discuss the proper distance between animals and humans. Regarding the pressure of wildlife rehabilitation and the climate crisis, I believe it is crucial to employ a pragmatic ethical standard when applying GPS collars to wildlife; a healthy give-and-take relationship is needed. Regardless of the type of relationship, one side can’t always give while the other one takes. That one-sided relationship is destined to fail.
Works Cited
Casper, R. M. (2009). Guidelines for the instrumentation of wild birds and mammals. Animal Behaviour, 78(6), 1477–1483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.09.023
Dore, K. M., Hansen, M. F., Klegarth, A. R., Fichtel, C., Koch, F., Springer, A., Kappeler, P. M., Parga, J. A., Humle, T., Colin, C., Raballand, E., Huang, Z., Qi, X., Di Fiore, A., Link, A., Stevenson, P. R., Stark, D. J., Tan, N., Gallagher, C. A., . . . Fuentes, A. (2020). Review of GPS collar deployments and performance on nonhuman primates. Primates, 61(3), 373–387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-020-00793-7
Hart, E. E., Fennessy, J., Rasmussen, H. B., Butler-Brown, M., Muneza, A., & Ciuti, S. (2020). Precision and performance of an 180g solar‐powered GPS device for tracking medium to large‐bodied terrestrial mammals. Wildlife Biology, 2020(3), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00669
Hebblewhite, M., & Haydon, D. T. (2010). Distinguishing technology from biology: a critical review of the use of GPS telemetry data in ecology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365(1550), 2303–2312. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0087
Latham, A. D. M., Latham, M. C., Anderson, D. P., Cruz, J., Herries, D., & Hebblewhite, M. (2014). The GPS craze: six questions to address before deciding to deploy GPS technology on wildlife. New Zealand Journal of Ecology, 39. https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/3204.pdf
