LPWA: Enabling Extreme Wildlife Tracking

To protect threatened species, conservationists need to fully understand their behaviour and which habitats are key to their survival. To that end, Vodafone is working with the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) in Scotland to track the movements and health of harbour seals, which have suffered a precipitous drop in numbers in the past decade. Vodafone and the SMRU will explore the use new low power wide area (LPWA) connectivity to build up a comprehensive picture of the seals’ behaviour, help understand why the population is in decline and then take remedial action. Monitors attached to the seals can use the cellular networks to feed location, activity and environmental data into SMRU scientists’ computer systems.