December 12, 2025

The Latham’s Snipe Project has been fortunate to receive funding through a partnership between Federation University and the Arthur Rylah Institute (Victorian State Government) to undertake a new tracking program. This funding has come from the Federal Government DCCEEW through the Renewable Energy Research Initiative and is intended to develope species-species guidance for reducing impacts of renewable energy developments on Latham’s Snipe and a bunch of other threatened species.

Birgita is leading this research program with support from her research centre (Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation) at FedUni. With a large group of experts and volunteers, the team successfully deployed 43 GPS Bluetooth tags on snipe during spring 2025 at the two largest monitoring sites in the Victoria and South Australia: Peterborough wetlands on the Great Ocean Road and Fox Lake in Robe. Most of these tags have been funded through the RERI project but there were also some tags left over Lori Gould’s PhD tagging research in Canberra.

The GPS tags use Bluetooth technology to transmit data to a nearby receiving device or “Hub”. The hub is installed on a tall pole (which we call a tower) so that the Hub has an unobstructed view across the wetland. This helps ensure line-of-sight with any snipe carrying tags that are on the ground, either hiding in the vegetation or out foraging. Three towers have been installed at Peterborough and one tower on the bird hide at Fox Lake.

These towers are receiving data regularly day and night. Twice a day the data on the Hub is transmitted to the manufacturer’s servers via the mobile phone network. The range of the Hub is up to 800m, so if the birds return to the area where the Hub is installed the data on their GPS tags will be received. Sometimes even birds flying past might transmit data, so long as they’re in range for a few seconds.

There is regular data coming in from about half the birds, with the other birds likely elsewhere in landscape and out of range of the receiver.

The data we receive from the tags will provide us important information on roosting and foraging areas birds use, day behaviours and flight height / flight speed, with which to assess potential wind turbine collision risk.