Wild Boars Online

The wild boar telemetry project in the Czech Republic started in autumn 2012 and this website has been created to present results of this project. Animals are marked with collars containing GPS modules which record location of individual animals. The project has been carried out by the Department of Game Management and Wildlife Biology of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and funded by the South Bohemian Society of Nature Conservation and Game Management (Jihočeská společnost pro ochranu přírody a myslivost). The National Park Šumava has contributed to the project as well. The main aim of the project is evaluation of spatiotemporal activity patterns of wild boar in different habitats as well as impact of different management measures (such as supplementary feeding) on activity patterns of marked animals. The results of the project will help to design effective management measures which will be aimed at reducing numbers of wild boar as well as preventing agricultural or forest damage caused by these animals. This project is unique especially due to its technological demands. Due to these technological challenges, there are only few institutions conducting wild boar telemetry projects worldwide.

The website has been created and maintained by the Department of Information Technologies of Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and the system uses GPS Trace Route 1.0, Ground Station Harvester (GSH 1.0) software.

Marking of animals

Wild boars are attracted into traps using corn grain decoys, caught, immobilized and marked with GPS collars.

Wildlife telemetry

Marked animals are tracked by the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the form of a collar which records animal´s location with accuracy of within few meters. A GPS receiver records animal´s location, time and date at programmed intervals (i.e. usually 1hour-intervals). The collar also contains an activity sensor which records animal´s activity (whether it is feeding, resting, or moving). Moreover, the activity sensor records the temperature and measurement accuracy. Newer collars are equipped with GSM modules containing telephone SIM cards, which enable data transport into user´s computer.