Polish environmental groupEcoLogicdidn’t believe double about placing a GPS tracker on a male white-hot stork . The practice is fairly routine : track Poland ’s white stork while theyembarkon their annual 6,000 - kilometer ( 3700 - mile ) migration to Africa . The outcome this year , however , were shocking both to the team and their billfold .
That ’s because the SIM - chip sender tie to a stork name Kajtek rack up a $ 2,700 speech sound government note .
The researchers were track Kajtek ’s movements and posting his journeyonlinebefore they recede signal on April 26 . His last known location target him at the Blue Nile region in Sudan . bionomic toldSuper Expressit ’s unlikely the bird is still live , and even more unlikely that he was placing the telephone set call . They assume someone found the tracker and placed the sim card in their phone , making some 20 calls before the team realized it .
White storks , which are launch in the Eastern Hemisphere , drop their summers in Europe and their wintertime in Africa . Their biannual migration can cover a distance of as much as10,000 kilometers(6,200 miles ) with the service of thermal updraft . The team started chase Kajtek last August .
in the beginning this year , a couple of whitened storks made newspaper headline when one Croatian duo’sornithological love affairwent viral , highlighting a male stork name Klepetan ’s arrival home to revert to his mate of 16 years . His partner , Malena , has to waive her one-year migration because of a handicap resulting from a shot by a hunter . She lives with her caretaker , and Klepetan add up home to her every class – a man that wing G of nautical mile just to be with his gal ? That ’s dedication .
Malena and Klepetan ’s love affaire is one example of the role tagging stork plays in the environmental enquiry and conservation of migratory Bronx cheer . This data helps scientist understand their riding habit , social behaviors , and threats .
The ashen stork is not at hazard , but one of its biggest threat are to their habitat . Industrialization and draining of wetland fight it towards near - extermination in Europe 50 years ago . Today , it is a species of least concern under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species . Its extremelylargerange places the bird all over West and East Europe as well as Africa . Its big universe sizing continues to increase with half - a - million pairs calling Europe family , and more than 700,000 worldwide .
EcoLogic does n’t know who made the calls , and they say it ’s likely they ’ll have to pay off for the expenses out of their own pocket .
[ H / T : ZME Science ]
