START
Charles Darwin Foundation. Betrayed by billy: A radio-collared Judas goat leads hunters to the herd.
Slaughtering 300,000 goats might seem a strange job for the Charles Darwin Foundation, the group responsible for the conservation of the Galépagos Islands. But it turns out to be the best way to rid the archipelago of these nonnative invaders. All it takes is a little GPS monitoring, computer mapping, and some old-fashioned marksmanship.
Using satellite images and GPS coordinates, the foundation's Isabela Project divided the 1,800-square-mile Isabela Island - which has no roads and five volcanoes - into an electronic grid. Each time one of 30 hunters records a kill, it gets registered as a white dot on the grid. (The dead animals are left to decompose.) Hunters can track the remaining herds' density and movements by following the dots. Once the population has been thinned and becomes harder to trace, hunters release a Judas goat - one equipped with a radio collar that can be tracked when it joins the herd. "Without this new technology, eradication wouldn't have been possible on an island as large as Isabela," says Felipe Cruz, the project's technical director.
The ecological stakes go way beyond goats. There are more than 500 invasive species scattered among the 120 islands, ranging from the black rat to the blackberry. The interlopers are devastating the ecosystem that Darwin made famous in Origin of Species. The Galépagos' giant tortoises are at greatest risk. Their breeding ground on Isabela - the island is home to half of all the endemic species in the archipelago - has been denuded by an estimated 125,000 goats.
Last summer, the foundation completed a four-year campaign to rid neighboring Santiago Island of feral pigs. That proved an ideal testing ground for the high tech eradication project. The goats of Isabela are now headed for the same fate.
START
signal : noise
The New Nature vs. Nurture
The Simpsons as Soothsayers
Jargon Watch
Death by GPS
You Light Up My Device
Emerging Traffic
Why Analog Is Cool Again
Exploded View
Moon Over Vegas
Take Your Medicine
Broadband for Suckers
Minitank Commander
Wi-Fi's Supply Guy
Wired | Tired | Expired
