Distress signals

Wildlife biologists snap radio collars on ground squirrels, strap transmitters on bats and stick electronic devices on just about anything that moves.

Yet now some scientists are asking: Just because we can, should we?

Radio telemetry -- in which researchers use transmitters to track animals -- has surged in popularity since brothers Frank and John Craighead pioneered the collaring of grizzly bears in Yellowstone in the 1960s. In some instances, animals wear the devices long after the research concludes. Yet scientists have put more effort into advancing the technologies than weighing the ethics of the practice.

“The problem I see is people just throw a bunch of collars on animals before they think deeply about the questions they’re asking,” says Rick Hopkins, a cougar researcher and co-owner of Live Oak Associates, an ecological consulting firm in San Jose.

While the devices have aided science, their use can harm creatures. Wild animals respond to stress with “capture myopathy,” a potentially life-threatening condition characterized by damage to muscle tissue. “Anytime you handle an animal or chemically restrict an animal you run the risk of mortality. If you collar enough animals, you have to assume some mortality,” Hopkins says.

Sometimes the devices can alter animal behavior, skewing scientific findings. University of Colorado biologist Marc Bekoff says a diminutive penguin species found in New Zealand and southern Australia have difficulty diving for food when fitted with small tracking devices. He says the equipment can alter nesting behavior, social interactions, mating and predation in other species.

“It can really change their behavior and other animals’ response to them,” Bekoff says. “Even if you don’t give a hoot about ethics, that means the data you’re collecting is tainted.”

In a search for less intrusive methods, some scientists have begun to experiment with techniques that do not require tranquilizer darts, radio collars, helicopters, surgical implants or handling wildlife.

“Noninvasive approaches are the wave of the future,” says University of Vermont wildlife biologist Robert Long. With his wife and fellow researcher Paula MacKay, Long is compiling a manual of noninvasive alternatives. They include remote cameras; hair snares, a Velcro-like material that snags a fur sample for DNA testing; and scent stations that collect tracks as animals sniff out bait.

Domestic animals help humans study wild animals too. Long says dogs locate scat, desert tortoises, snakes and wolves killed by poachers.

Long, like Hopkins and many other biologists, believes radio collars are still useful. For example, researchers can locate an animal quickly after it has died or given birth; the collars give off a signal when a creature stops moving for a prolonged period.

“Noninvasive techniques have come a long way,” Long says, “but there are still some things you can get from collaring [that] you can’t get from anything else.”

Meanwhile, a more nuanced ethical and aesthetic debate is underway: Is a wild animal still wild if it’s wearing a glorified dog collar?

In Yellowstone, where biologists with the Yellowstone Wolf Project reintroduce wolves to the park, some visitors object to seeing animals adorned with plastic collars. Due to protests, project leader Doug Smith collars only about one-third of the population, though he is permitted to track half the park’s wolves.

“I’m trying to balance an intense need for information with a public that comes here to experience pristine nature,” Smith says. “The information we need is pressing, and the radio collars are the best way to get it.”

Although researchers say telemetry can yield valuable results, no one has reviewed the practice to see if wild animals are better off now, overall, than they were before the Craighead brothers figured out how to lasso a grizzly.

“You can get these huge data dumps from ... collars, but what does any of it mean?” Hopkins asks.

“There’s no central agency, warehouse or website where researchers can see what sort of research has been conducted,” adds Camilla Fox, director of wildlife programs for the Animal Protection Institute in Sacramento. Absent that, she says, some telemetry studies may be needlessly repeated.

In addition, no standard guidelines exist for radio-collaring animals, Fox says. University researchers review individual studies, and when an endangered species is involved they consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but practices vary considerably from study to study.

Despite those concerns, Smith concludes after 26 years of wolf watching that collars do not significantly affect wild animals struggling with greater threats to their survival. Says Smith: “It’s the most minor minutiae in their life.”