Migrating eagles ended up racking massive cellular bill for the scientists to pay -

Recently the Migrating eagles that had tracking beacons on them to send the texts to scientists, have accrued massive roaming charges to the scientists that they ended up taking loans to pay these charges. They also set up a crowdfunding campaign to help raise the money for their research, all because some of the birds ended up making unexpected detours.

One such particular eagle named Min was so far off from its actual course that the transmitter sent so many texts that the entire budget for tracking was used up. Min was initially expected to fly to Kazakhstan from where he would then sent a series of Coordinates via SMS that the tracking beacon collected while being out of the range of the network. Each of these texts would have had cost approximately 30 cents. But what happened was that Min flew straight to Iran and then texts were then sent from there. From there these texts amounted for about 77 cents per text.

Igor Karyakin, one of the people at the RRRCN (Russian Raptors Research and Conservation Network) said, “They have really left us penniless.”

Fortunately for the team, they might still be able to pay up for the network charges. So far the crowdfunding campaign started by the RRRCN has gathered as much as 1000 rubles which amounts to about 1563 dollars. This money is enough to pay for the tracking project for the end of 2019.

The researchers of RRRCN also made a post on Facebook that the wireless carrier for the team; MegaFon, has said that they will rerun the accrued charges spent by Min on Iran’s detour to the company.

MegaFon also announced that they will start a new special tariff for the sake of the tracking eagles. This will allow for the research of the migrating bird tracking teams to be much cheaper than it was earlier.

Animal tracking is nowadays becoming easier as the tags used on them are powerful and efficient along with being less obstructive to these animals who wear them.